


Legless

by springandbysummerfall



Category: Dragonball Z
Genre: Angst, Drama, Experimental Prose, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-02-04 22:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1795639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springandbysummerfall/pseuds/springandbysummerfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Cell, a few of Vegeta's priorities in life have been forced to change, and for once, he's ready to make the adjustment. However, Bulma is not. Still bitter about being rejected, she's just trying to live a life of single motherhood without losing face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Uptempo Death Scene

She didn’t know when things between she and Vegeta had petered out, but, somewhere between him walking in on her on the toilet, pregnancy test trembling in her hands, and his slapping the ‘LIFTOFF’ button on Capsule 4 before the sun even had a chance to set that very day—certainly his proudest moment, she’d grumbled—well…petered out it had.

At one point, before her body had gone and released one teeny-tiny rebellious egg against both she and her contraceptive’s wishes, Bulma had loved the drama between them, craved the build up imbued in their every moment, the spark in their whole deliciously ribald relationship. Wouldn’t any girl? 

The excitement of each pause between notes of their heckling, her breathlessness as the crescendo of their baited passions carried her forward into the unknown between them. Was it like a high drama opera? A tragedy in its typical, classic formula: 

Girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, boy is hopelessly in love with another (in this case, himself)....

...girl gets knocked up, boy checks out, and then, after a terribly awkward crying and self-immolation scene—it’s lights out, curtains drawn. 

An end that everyone knows is coming, and yet one the actors, inevitably, are blind to. 

Or, perhaps, instead of that morose and cliché swan dive, instead of a dismal end to a pretty sorry relationship, what they had had was more of a caper, hosted, rather, in the deliberate swing of her twenty-something hips, his fingers tracing over them as he stalled stalking past her in the hallway, his hooked smile cast in her direction at the dinner table informing her that he may just be topping off supper with her tonight. So maybe it was more like free form jazz? Spontaneous, passionate, reckless, daring, and completely inscrutable. Seriously. Who gets jazz?

Maybe it was! Say, she would be the clarinet, then! She’d always wanted to play the clarinet. That beautiful, throaty woodwind instrument, its lowest registers hauntingly seductive and velvety, just like her own--well, sometimes. 

Vegeta, that arrogant, frustrating bastard, had to be, undoubtedly, a brass instrument. Yes, he was the brass instrument that sometimes made everyone’s eyes cross with its take-no-prisoners volume. While the clarinet had a completely different tone—could sometimes be silky, beckoning the listener with its rich control, carrying uniquely in a sea of soft woodwinds. And other times—most times, who was she kidding—the clarinet just wasn’t played right and it was shrill, shrill, shrill.

Vegeta, she decided, was a saxophone, dark, intimidating, and alluring, almost created just to set the listener on edge with either frustration or sensuality and with complete and enthusiastic disregard for how the listener feels about that. 

And yet, he was no one trick pony, her sulky, jet-eyed saxophonist. He was a whole range of sounds, even if no one else could pick it out of all those sharp tones but her. 

Sometimes she could pull from him those coarse growls from the back of the throat that made her tremble like she were some naive, moon-faced maiden watching some wild, bucking musician in the back of a smoky bar. Sometimes she’d conjure up his bluesy history, pull from him memories he’d long thought dead, and she might, just might get to hear a new song, vulnerable in its history....Many times he was the kind of artist who played with infuriating wit and aggressive, challenging overtones, causing her head to spin like she was in dire need of an exorcism because she wasn’t sure which cutting insult of her abilities she should start spewing bile at first. He was all control, and stamina, had the grit of a true musician’s diaphragm, his imposing timbres butting up against her more floaty woodwind. He was always playing two songs at once, it seemed, and she never knew quite where he stood, except it was never still, that was for sure. 

And, sometimes, the saxophonist’s heated cadences butted against her walls and, instead of fortifying the barricade she’d built masterfully around her to keep him out, she surrendered, she succumbed to that flutter-tonguing of any masterful musician against the most intimate parts of her.

Her private parts, more specifically.

So how goes this uptempo death scene? Well, the clarinet goes first in this lark, and it has to have its solo, right? Its voice has to be heard. 

The clarinetist informs the saxophonist several times just to relax, and that the clarinet’s voice is crucial when it comes to the rules and atmosphere at the seat of Capsule Corporation. But, of course, the saxophone thinks the damned score is written all for him, and that it’s acceptable if the foundation is shaking beneath them when he is playing. 

The score evolved quickly from a disagreement of principles to a battle of wills. Of course, the clarinet has a more elegant, refined sound than the saxophone, and for that reason it might just organically end up taking a little more time with its solo, which the saxophonist disapproves of. The saxophonist does not want the clarinetist to lead.

And soon the saxophonist and clarinetist have no patience for the other’s tone a second longe, and—welp, here they were. Not even in separate dressing rooms, pouting in front of those cool, moody vanity mirror lights. No, they were not even ignoring each other in the same damned city. The musicians had moved beyond thoroughly loathing each other into a special, skillful kind of complete disregard sometimes literally planets apart, that both were quite content with continuing.

No slowly paced, quiet decrescendo of a relationship here. Just a roaring fight, a plain ol’ “I’m out of here,” and a walk out the door to find new things, better things, or just space-y things, seen from the inside of the concave windshield of a spaceship’s cabin.

And that was where they were as a couple as the fate of the world was being decided by a motley bunch of martial artists and a gaggle of robots.

No, she couldn’t put her finger on the exact moment, couldn’t draw her finger over the calendar to rest contemplatively against the number of a day which birthed the exact second things had fallen apart irreparably between them.

And now, NOW he was back in her house. Having tumbled into his old bed after their final battle with Cell not unlike some smelly, couch surfing, pointy-haired leech. But this was no common moocher, oh no—complicated didn’t even begin to describe the man presently sleeping face down, dead-weight crushing into his pillow and, even now, still stubbornly alive. 

She didn’t know when things had gotten beyond control between them, fled right out of sight, sorely incapable of being dissected under her microscope. The thing between them was as obstinate and inexplicable to her prodding as they were to each other. 

All that positively remained of him in her life was the occasional frowny face from her bright eyed, amazing baby boy who was his own little force of nature. And, of course, the question that she was doomed to answer, over and over again...The Question, which always went something like this: 

“Oh, he is just so sweet! And where is the father?” 

Eyebrows furrowed with concentration, fingers ticking off bullet points and mutters not unlike her father’s as she tried to piece together a not so smart-alecky explanation for what the heck her life was like as a single parent, and it never really got easier, every time she got The Question. 

No, she couldn’t put a finger on just when the dance between them surged in energy, set them ablaze, and then flared furiously with new intent until it burned their passion for the other into a crisp. The End, if it could really be called an end now that they had a burping, farting, giggling little monster between them. It had been a forte of screaming matches and drumming fury—How dare you just ignore me when I tell you that I’m pregnant—How dare you get pregnant—How dare things happen that are beyond your control—How dare you have feelings, How dare you have goals, How dare you be breathing, and so on. Not one of those calming, pan flute type albums you pick up on the fly at a whole food’s store. But understand it or not, the enigma, the migraine that lay on her parent’s guest bed right now that was so emotionally unavailable and self-involved that she could just stare death into him right now with the frustration that was building in her just looking at his backside—

He was back, and as always with him, it was just something she had to deal with. Their finale, evidently, had not yet come.


	2. Poltergeist

She was ninety nine percent confident her house was haunted. 

And what do you do when your daily life is troubled by the paranormal? Was there someone you could call? Some 1-800 number in the yellow pages? Maybe she could catch it if she stayed up and watched the hour long infomercials that ran through the latest hours of the night. 

She stared down at her old cord-style office phone, a dusty and pastel yellow relic, its kinky cord spilling over the back of her desk, and she wondered if she really should call somebody.

She needed a priest, a rabbi, that hippie from the store downtown that smelled nauseatingly of incense. Something. 

She had a fleeting urge to ask her Saiyan to sniff around and see what he thought, but tossed it right out the window, because: well, pride, obviously.

It had been almost two weeks since she’d found him passed out face down in his pillow, in the same tattered suit that Eighteen had snapped his humerus in, just bleeding into her good sheets. Two weeks, and she hadn’t properly seen him again. Just traces of him. A missing roast in the fridge. A wet towel thrown carelessly beside the hamper—couldn’t even make it into the hamper, she’d grumbled—and, occasionally...this was the creepy part...things rearranged on her desk in her lab downstairs.

Was it him? Why on Earth would he be down there in the first place?

It was more likely she was dealing with a poltergeist.

She was notoriously disorganized, she was willing to admit. Yes, she left paperwork sprawled from here to Tallahassee, yes, she had a few more lipstick-stained coffee cups growing mold on her desk than was appropriate, and yes—cue eye roll—she could probably clean up some of these spare nuts and bolts that everyone kept tripping on when they came down to visit.

She knew that it was likely she’d just misplaced something and forgot where she’d set it. Sure. But this was different. This was more. 

The first time caused her to pause a second, and then resume life. The second time, her eyes narrowed in suspicion, her fingers still over her drawer where she kept her firearm. The third time, she threw a saddle and some reins over her paranoia and let it lead her, rigging a camera system into the knick knacks and picture frames that formed a hodgepodge wall on the back of her desk with spare wire from her desk drawers.

Was this some unhappy Capsule Corp employee, trying to find dirt on her or sell blueprints under the table for some hush-hush CC project? ....Did Capsule Corp even have a hush-hush project?

Although she was a left brainer through and through, she was also an engineer, innovative by definition. Her father’s nutty improvising and visionary wackiness was imprinted right smack on her DNA, and, with that, came a little bit of creativity. 

In this case, even though she knew sensibly that her ghost was likely someone with a grudge (or a death wish), she couldn’t escape the hairs on the back of her neck and the suspicion that this was somehow supernatural or something. This was somehow important somehow. Bravo getting past her Saiyan guard dog, but then again, Vegeta’s reaction to her pregnancy had been to pull a Narcissus and dive head first into that famous reflecting pool, and so he was likely blind to anything but his own twitching pecs at this point.

Did she fear for her or Trunks’ safety? Well, yes, kind of, a little bit, maybe. Because each time the intruder opened the lab door—the creak undeniable—Bulma would lean forward, ready for the creep’s face to slide across the TV screen as he slid into her office chair and started opening her drawers—

And each time, the sonofabitch would turn over her photo frames and knick knacks one by one, dominoes falling in tandem with her jaw as it inched further and further towards the floor, and the chair creaked, once again, invisibly, with someone’s weight.

She was about to tear out her hair.

It was in this frustrated, wacky cloud of anxiety that she was trying to get a spoonful of mashed peaches into Trunks’ mouth. Two dozen empty jars spread out before her—out of Trunks’ curious reach, of course. 

This wasn’t the first time she lamented her half-Saiyan’s appetite, but with the grim purpose of any overtaxed parent, she soldiered on.

The problem wasn’t that he refused to eat the peaches—four peach jars licked clean were testimonial to that. No, the problem was that he had to also wear it like war paint. 

It was a tragedy of the highest level. 

1\. She watches the spoon enter his mouth cleanly with grim anticipation. Her mouth parts with hope

2\. His chubby fingers float upwards towards his mouth as her heart sinks

Trunks lets the orange goo dribble into his round hand with the help of his little shoveling tongue and then his hand squeeeezes, baby food squirting from his thick knuckles. And just as she groans, he pops the slick spit up peaches back into his mouth for a second round, and finishes his performance by smearing the remainder of it across his cheeks radiating the happiness that is only felt by a Saiyan in front of food

4\. and then lets out an ear-curling shriek as it gets in his eye.

Every. Time.

She dropped her head into her arms on the edge of the high chair tray and whimpered soundlessly.

She felt Trunks’ sticky hand pat her hair supportively.

Their was a knock as one of the cupboard doors closed behind her, and she looked up in that direction, harried.

And met Vegeta’s alarmed stare.

He gripped a turkey leg with one hand and an oversized can of pumpkin in the other, and her eyes ticked over the items with puzzlement.

And then jumped reflexively as Trunks walloped what remained of the jar of peaches, sending goo flying through the room and into her face, the jar crashing against the wall amid a string of giggles. She sputtered and wiped her eyes, causing most of it to just settle into the hair at her temples and later form a crust in her bangs.

When she opened her eyes, Vegeta was gone.

Irrationally, she felt a surge of anger towards him. Maybe it was just that he still had yet to say a word to her since Goku death and Cell’s demise. Maybe it was that she was a hairs-breadth away from having a stress-induced meltdown, and, you know, he was to blame. But she was just suddenly on fire with indignation. 

She jumped from her seat and spun around just to catch his profile through the windows cross the lawn, the back door already clicking shut softly.

“Oh no you don’t,” she growled, drawing Trunks from his high chair and storming after him, oblivious to the sticky orange mess splattered over her and smeared across Trunks’ face like a bad case of jaundice.

“Wait!” She called, trailing after him hurriedly, her sneakers sinking into thick summer grass. 

She saw him freeze and his shoulders hunch, and she only had a second to feel insulted before coming up on his side, Trunks bobbing at her side. Now that she had him in her crosshairs, her resentment curiously flew out the window, replaced instead by the question burning in her mind’s eye.

“Wait,” she huffed, standing now in front of him, looking up into his face. His eyes were walled off, expressive if only for their no-holds-barred contempt for everything they landed on—the eyes she’d been dealt since he’d discovered she was pregnant. But his face was, uncharacteristically, drawn.

“Vegeta, I need your help,” she said, before nearly retching at her choice of words. Her face scrunched up. “Well, maybe not your help, but your advice, or, your...whatever.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Someone has been breaking into my labs and pawing around my stuff,” she explained, trying to keep the worry out of her voice. 

She really should have thought this through. She didn’t want to seem incapable in front of the Saiyan...especially this Saiyan. He’d just twist the knife deeper, probably, although what else did she have to lose?

His eyes widened fractionally, the turkey leg wavering in his knuckles, but she pressed on, knowing she was fighting time, his already miserly patience dwindling. “I tried rigging up security cameras, but somehow, the bastard knew! I’m starting to become really concerned. There’s all sorts of security-sensitive information in my lab, but oddly enough, nothing has been breached. Except for all my personal stuff... my pictures of Trunks, stuff I’ve collected over time from my adventures with Goku-san. It all just gets shuffled around or winds up missing, and it’s really creeping me out.”

They stared at one another helplessly for a countless moment. He still had the same impossibly dark eyes, eyes she could fall into when he shared her bed, sprawled out over his wide chest. Still the same chiseled jaw, clenched, making her want to chastise him for grinding his teeth like she used to. His chest drifted up and down subtly as he stared at her, and her lips drew down softly in a runaway moment of memory. For a moment—oh Kami! Just a hungry moment—her heart unthawed fractionally, and her gaze drew across his features with the softest sigh, the salty taste of the skin of his jaw against her lips remembered suddenly, violently.

His eyes narrowed and his mouth parted as if he were finally about to reply, but she recognized that look. No good could come from that look. No good could come from this man. With pulse-racing self-preservation, her heart cinched up, locked up, and drew all its bridges upwards into itself, shuttering itself from the world.

“Look, I’m not asking you to go out of your way for us or anything, or good Kami, acknowledge us or anything of that nature,” she snapped. “I’m just worried about my son and I’s safety, and I thought maybe you could pass by one night and see if you could catch this guy. Just peep on him, get his stats. I could take it from there.”

He snorted softly, turning fractionally away from her as if thinking about it, gaze drifting. 

Thinking of insulting my ability to defend myself and the whole inexplicable reason I’m still alive, no doubt. She bared her teeth in humiliation. “Nevermind, I’ll do it myself!” 

She spun around angrily without bothering to wait for his rejection and marched back towards the back door. She clutched Trunks maybe a little too tightly, making him squirm.

She was so tired of playing second banana with him! Her mind was a growing storm, buzzing and snapping with fury. Why did she even try? Did she never learn?

The back door stuck in the summer heat, and she tugged on it in frenzied frustration. When it finally budged, she let out a loud “Ugh!,” punctuating it with a kick to the doorjamb. 

“I give up!” She hollered out to the spacious, empty seat of Capsule Corporation, the echoes causing Trunks to glance around for the source with wide eyes. She placed her other hand on her hip with a steely frown. “If you need something done, you gotta do it yourself,” she murmured to herself.

With renewed strength, she slid Trunks from under her arm to rest on her belly, leaning back to accommodate his weight and plant a big kiss right on his moist lips. He blinked with surprised delight. 

“Don’t worry, kid, mama’s got this.” She wiggled her nose against his and smiled. “Mama’s bringing out the big guns.”

````````  
Trunks was sound asleep when she tip toed from the nursery and gestured at her mother in the adjoining room that she was headed to bed. Bunny smiled warmly and waved her on, turning back to her evening dramas in her fuzzy pink robe and curlers before she joined her husband in bed.

Bulma padded to her room giddily. 

Tonight was the night. Tonight she caught the culprit! 

It had been a long day at the Capsule Corp headquarters downtown, and Bulma had barely had time to scarf down a plate of cold noodles before getting Trunks, whiny and rubbing his groggy eyes, into the bath and into bed. Her heels clacked on the hard wood of her spacious bedroom, her lab coat drifting against her calves. It had been a long day, but it was going to be capped off wonderfully. She might even set off some of the fireworks stored in one of the lab closets and down a pint before Trunks inevitably needed to be rocked back to sleep. Screw it! It was Friday night, and she was in control of her life—not some thief sneaking around in the night. Not even some hunky Saiyan freeloader.

She fluffed her hair and strode into her expansive closet, where a concealed safe stood innocuously in the far corner, looking like an oversized jewelry cabinet. Smile still curling around her teeth, she placed her long fingers against the screen, neatly manicured nails splayed, and was rewarded with the pop of the lock.

Picking her favorite firearm was nearly as difficult as deciding what to wear in the morning, but without much to-do, she plucked one of her older models from the bottom rack, a black long rifle whose weight was solid and familiar in her palms. 

Bulma Briefs just happened to be armed to the teeth.

Ah yes, it took her back to the good old days, hunting dragon balls and avoiding little imperialists with Napoleonic complexes. 

She snorted softly. Nothing much had changed.

Bulma used her teeth to open the bag of ammo, careful not to upset her mani or lip stain, and carefully loaded the magazine, one by one. 

She had no intention of shooting anyone tonight; however, she couldn’t wait to scare the pants off the unsuspecting sneak. Loading the firearm was just a precaution, but she had to admit, the rifle’s familiar weight was doing all sorts of things to her self-confidence.

What a freeing night this was going to be!

Bulma sank the magazine into the butt of the gun decisively.

````````

Only when she kicked open the lab door with her glossy nude heel and swung around the corner, rifle aimed dead center at the offender’s chest, did she experience reservations.

Vegeta sat leisurely in her office chair, arms folded behind his head, and swiveled his body with his toes just enough to reveal one eyebrow creeping steadily upwards.

Her shooting stance wavered, and the muzzle drooped towards the floor. “Vegeta?” Without thought, she dropped the magazine from the gun before resting them on the top of a file cabinet. Her knuckles found closure on her hips. “What on Earth are you doing here?” 

The ghost in her leather chair looked up at her with wide, haunted eyes, curled his hand around a photo of Trunks, Yamcha, and Puar at the carnival that always came round in early, early Spring, when the daffodils weren’t quite awake and the heat of the sun was still tender.

It was just Vegeta, her ghost, trying to find somewhere to tread. 

“Can’t a Prince get a little privacy?” His voice echoed hoarsely through the lab.

She drew near him soundlessly, rebelliously, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, waiting.


	3. And All Other Related Synonyms

The question that had gone through her mind more times than she could count since Vegeta had shown up on her figurative doorstep to beat Goku to a pulp was, once again, replaying through her mind. 

How on Earth did his logic work???

Sometimes, when she was in the shower absently shaving her legs, or nodding off, strung between those few minutes of untamed thinking and sleep, she would...how did she admit this without sounding crazy...

...make Vegeta an online dating profile in her mind’s eye. 

It was just something she did that she got a kick out of and it put her to sleep, okay?

There was no question of what kind of profile picture she’d choose for him. She had a handful of pictures of him, although the first few she’d had to argue with him over when he made to rip the camera out of her hands. Some of them were just his normally brooding self, to which he’d rolled his eyes after catching her taking them. While a few others she’d snapped while he was training—shirtless—in his skin tight shorts—that she secretly relished having. Oh, that butt. How she missed that butt. There were a few, however, that any normal person would blanch at her having. Oh, yes, the Embarrassing, Shameful, Unattractive Photo that everyone had. This one just happened to be Vegeta inhaling an extra large platter of takeout, lo mein dripping from his mouth while he yelled at her, a noodle-faced Cthulhu, the vein on his temple throbbing. It used to be a reward for her, the prize at the end of the fight that indicated she’d successfully gotten under his skin. He wasn’t normally so ill mannered while he ate—she kinda liked that about him—but, in this case, she’d plucked a nerve. In her mind’s eye, she always picked that one, and snickered.

So that picture was chosen without question. The bio, however, was the difficult part. Not the description—Short, maniacal alien with a history of fratricide—or the Interests—World domination, brutally and fiendishly murdering the man who saved my life, kissing my biceps—or Favorite Foods: Pain—but the following. The part about about what he looks for in a woman.

At this point, she wasn’t even sure he swung her way. Why else would he have dropped her like she was hot, obsessing over her best guy friend? Bulma blew her bangs out of her face.

All (not so illegitimate) joking aside, what exactly had compelled him to kiss her in the first place? Not that she could blame anyone for wanting to. She was a pretty stunning genius heiress, after all, and not even churlish aliens were immune to that. But of all the seemingly castrated, one-track-minded, sickeningly-motivated men she’d met (and fallen for) in her lifetime, this one took the cake. 

She remembered it like it was yesterday, her fingertips drawing across her lips in memory. 

He’d just gotten out of the shower. Steam billowed through the hallway. He had a habit of taking scorchingly hot, quick showers. 

She’d just gotten done folding laundry and was making her way down the hall to his room. They had a tenuous agreement about his personal space. She insisted, naturally, that he couldn’t keep her out of her own house, while he demanded that she at least keep her nose out of his stuff yet make sure to keep his room tidied. It was a rule she’d been working on expanding.

As she opened his dresser drawers, placing his shorts and suits neatly into the fragrant cedar drawers before second guessing herself and deliberately tousling them with a smug smirk, she felt something—oh, who was she kidding, she always knew when it was him—behind her, and turned, lips parted. 

He stood with his stupid impeccable posture, shoulders wide in the doorway. Sensing that he was the one with the upper hand, his lips curled ominously. One hand gripped the knot of the towel wrapped around his waist, dangerously perched on the edge of his hips as if at any moment he could tug it off just to spite her.

“What do we have here?” He smiled fiendishly. “Come for the show?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.” She shut the drawer softly and folded her arms over her chest. 

“Then get out. I’ve work to do.”

Bulma emitted a not-so-attractive snort and looked at him with the practiced, bored amusement that usually caused him to get frustrated and hand her the win. “Yeah, working hard, I see.” She crossed the room casually, but not before stopping to lean into his space, fully knowing that was the key—always the key—to disarming him. “Can’t say that it’s helping you get any bigger, though.”

The problem with Vegeta was that he always knew how to get directly under her skin. 

“You’ll find your bots on your father’s desk.” 

She froze, and then began to redden. 

“I didn’t even bother walking the few extra steps to throw them on your desk this time.” He was nearly purring. “I demanded he work on them immediately, and afterwords your mother fed me cake and served me tea.”

Her eyes grew wider as his grin grew more dark. 

She lost it. “Oh, you are despicable,” she snarled. 

“I invented the term.”

She was so mad she could spit. “Under ‘pathetic, stupid alien’ and all other related synonyms in the dictionary, you’ll find your picture!”

“Mmm. I plan on spending some private time admiring that picture tonight.”

“Is this getting you off?” She drew back, balling her fists. 

“If I didn’t have much, much more important things to do with my time, I might just spend the rest of my life making off-color jokes, even if they be beneath a Prince such as I, just to watch you squirm. It would be truly endless satisfaction.” His smirk grew toothier, sinisterly hovering like a crescent moon in her field of vision.

Her teeth grit. “Oh, yeah?” This is the part where her common sense stuttered momentarily, the part where she wondered, if she had just done or said something else, would any of this have ever happened? “Well.” She hooked her finger in the knot of towel at Vegeta’s waist and pulled lightly, creating a crevice that she peered into, down, down past the V of his lower abdomen at the juncture of his thighs below as Vegeta’s face all at once slackened and then tightened with seething, terrifying indignation.

She snapped the towel back in place and clucked her tongue, meeting his eyes again. “Can’t say that I’ve seen smaller. At least we both agree that I would be endless satisfaction. You, on the other hand...will only be impressing your hand tonight.”

How did she walk away alive from that? She asked herself that sometimes.

It was only when she was halfway down the hallway that the levity of what she’d just done came crashing down on her, and she began to feel panicked. Vegeta must have been feeling something similar, because it didn’t take him any time to catch up to her.

Abruptly, he was in her face, the indigo chroma of his ki energy crackling in the dark hallway.

“You’ll pay for that.”

“Do you take MasterCard?” She squeaked.

Oh, younger Bulma, she chided herself in her mind’s eye. Always playing with fire, weren’t you?

There was something about his hair when he just stepped out of the shower. Even though it was normally a bit wild, stretching upward, thick and coarse and blackest black, it wasn’t necessarily untidy. When he’d been under the spray awhile and in a cloud of steam, the tufts became a bit weighted down and disheveled in a way that wasn’t entirely unattractive. Who was she kidding, it was actually really foxy. Sometimes he did things that sent a shock right to her lady parts, and she couldn’t say when he grabbed her arm and pulled her close that it wasn’t one of those times.

He bared his teeth down at her. Her belly flopped. Over and over, like it was trying to stop-drop-and-roll the panic spreading throughout her body. 

To be fair, at this point he probably should have known that all he’d have to do is whisper “Boo” and she’d jump right out of her skin. Unfortunately for her, he wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. If there were three things in his life that he could never really truly usurp, it was probably Frieza, Kakarot, and then Bulma. But especially Bulma. 

And maybe that’s why he kissed her.

His lips pressed against hers without warning, and her eyes widened even further, first staring at the wall behind him—Is this even real life?—before shooting to his face, where, to her total and absolute surprise, he was kissing her with his eyes closed. 

Her heart hammering in her chest, Bulma, frankly, had no idea what to do. For a breathless moment, she stood dumbly, lips pressed beneath his, arms dangling at her sides, his hand burning her upper arm.

She flinched when his eyes opened. 

They were not the innocent eyes of the boy next door making his first move.

Under long, dark lashes, lids lowered fractionally with—what was going on? was this...was this desire?—his jet eyes peered up at her with dark promise.

Her mouth went dry.

Open eyes, so open and full of promise and dark potential that she could run through them for days, revealing somewhere inside him where a meadow of deep blue and black flowers lingered, where she could be seen twirling, falling into their feather-soft petals and where they would catch her weight. 

She normally considered herself a smart, sensual woman, but in this case, she did not.

Bulma placed her hand over her hot, hot cheek, and just...turned, striding down the hall in a daze.

“Is that all you’ve got?” His voice reverberated softly down the hall.

Her feet came to a stop.

Her mouth was dry, her head was empty. She was speechless. The jerk had made her speechless.

“I see. So when I compare notes with your ex-boyfriend and tell him that I’ve had much, much better, do you think he will agree with me?”

She looked over her shoulder, blue curls whipping around with her.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

He laughed, and it was throaty, and arrogant.

“I beg to differ.”

Her lips curled around her teeth. “You leave him out of this.”

“Why? Nothing is off limits, in my book. Nothing...not even you.”

She was striding right back up to his too-pleased face before she could have uttered kamehameha. 

“Are you insinuating that this is some kind of game?” She hissed.

“Life is game,” he murmured, cruel smile blossoming, “and anything is a chess piece. You are either the winner or the loser. And there can only be one winner.”

Her finger found its place against his bare sternum, warm and hard, her fingernail pricking it lightly. 

“I will not be used in your completely sociopathic, absurd game,” she snarled into his face. 

He captured her hand in his own larger one, and his head tilted, a cheshire smile splitting his normally hard features.

“I will always remember that about you,” he grieved, eyes bright with wickedness. “What a terrible kisser you were—”

She gripped his chin and smashed her lips against his. His lips remained soft and unyielding, the warmth of his body and soap-smell wafting over her. Growling inaudibly, she pressed harder. She felt a laugh rumble up from his chest, and her eyes flicked up and met his own, smiling down at her devilishly.

Finally, his mouth parted slowly, temptingly, and gazing up at him, she traced his upper lip with her tongue.

Finally, and oh-so-dangerously she knew now with distance and clarity, the mischief in his gaze receded and was replaced by a rare depth.

“How dare you,” she replied huskily into his mouth, his teeth against her lips, “you, you muscle-bound, stubborn, strapping jerk- -”

“Oh shut up,” he muttered harshly before pulling her close, fisting his hand in her hair—with care—-and finally, finally, their mouths parted in tandem and there was a jolt of electricity that passed between them as their tongues met.

If she had the chance to go back in time and do things differently, would she? Well, obviously not, because she wouldn’t trade Trunks for the world. Life had infinite purpose and meaningfulness now that he was keeping her on her toes, blowing up the living room with farts when she had company, drawing all the little old ladies out at the grocery store with his heartbreaker blue eyes, and giggling uncontrollably every time she playfully nipped his toes. But if Trunks weren’t part of it? If he wasn’t a factor? Would she?

In the soft light of her lab, peering down at Vegeta, who sat, holding a photo that she thought was only dear to her, she had to reconsider. When Vegeta had first left her, when she realized he truly wasn’t coming back for the birth, but only for Goku, always Goku, she would have replied yes. Yes, she wished it had never happened. Yes, she wished the mess he’d created of her heart and the lingering stain of her distrust of herself hadn’t happened, that she’d wished she’d been a stronger woman than that, that she hadn’t been so driven to madness by...whatever it was between them.

But now, as her hand floated down to rest delicately on his cheek, and rather than bat it away, which he’d done dozens of times before, he leaned into it, she had to revise her answer.

Maybe her life would have been less jumbled if she hadn’t given into his taunting and kissed him that day. But there wouldn’t be this thrum that he made inside her body, either, that filled her up, even when he took it away.

“Vegeta,” she murmured softly. “If there’s something that you want, just ask for it.” His eyes flicked over her with suspicion, and her conviction stuttered. Don’t patronize him, for Kami’s sake, don’t patronize him! She screamed at herself. “I mean, if you wanted a picture of...of Trunks, if that’s all you wanted, I would have been glad to accommodate you.”

He growled softly and tossed the picture onto her desk, turning away from her. “I don’t want the damned picture.”

She bristled. “Then why have you been down here messing with my stuff the last week?”

“What is it I’m supposed to be doing?” He snapped. “What is it that I’m supposed to want?”

She stalled.

“I don’t know,” she said helplessly.

“I don’t know either,” he said snidely, standing, and in her heels, they were eye to eye. “Why am I even still here?”

She felt a quick pang somewhere in her chest. “I really don’t know,” she mumbled weakly.

“What am I supposed to do with myself now?” He raised his voice, but she had the feeling he was talking more out loud to himself than her. “My pride has hinged on retribution and is all that has concerned me, ever. I have eaten at the plate of revenge for so long now that without it I have nothing to sustain me. I have trained for a moment that never came. I have nothing to call my own except failure, and this feeling...what is this feeling?” He bellowed, making her jump, her mouth part with surprise. “This feeling that I have a goddamned conscience?” He was really yelling now, and her brows knit as she struggled to keep up with him.

“What’s so bad about having a conscience? Okay, so you can’t kill some guy that cuts you off in traffic and doesn’t use his turn signal,” she pointed out timidly. “That’s not so bad. Should people really be punished for being foolish?”

He stared at her, searing.

“Ohhhhhkay, maybe you think so. But there are other ways to solve problems, besides, you know, murder.”

He was really starting to lose her, so she switched angles.

“Look,” she huffed. “I’m not going to lecture you on ethics anymore. I’m no philosopher, anyway. Let’s just agree to disagree. What I do know, is that you don’t need to feel so terrible about all of this. You’re putting so much weight on yourself for things that are out of your control. Focus on something else, Vegeta—”

He snorted unkindly.

“—because obviously what you’ve been doing with your time is not working.” She finished with her teeth grit.

“What else is worth my time?” He scoffed.

“Uh, what about your son?” She was really losing her temper. 

Once again, he snorted with contempt, but before she exploded on him, something in his dark eyes—something which was connecting the dots—caused her to stall. 

“Shit, Vegeta!” She exclaimed, gesturing dramatically at the door. No one could say she wasn’t trying to hold it together. “You’ve got a son just a few doors down from you that could use a guy like you in his life.” It was like she was watching gears move behind his eyes, the blockhead, and she...she was the one who was putting the puzzle together for him. It lit a fire underneath her. “Your son, who has all this potential, who could use your guidance.” Maybe that was going a little too far. 

“I am so tired of you telling me what to do,” he snarled, but it truly seemed half hearted.

“I’m not telling you to do anything! I’m just trying to point out the obvious, which isn’t that obvious evidently because you seem completely blind to anything but yourself!”

“Why would I care more about someone more than myself?” He hollered back in a tone that was as genuinely baffled as it was disparaging. 

This was an argument they’d had before. Often. Why should he care about someone more than himself, when he was the only one who could protect himself? The only one he could trust to make the right decision? They would never be able to build a bridge between their opposite upbringings, but if she could have empathy towards his, damnet, he could do the same for her.

“Because what’s the point of life without other people? What’s the point,” her hands waved around her head as her eyes rolled, “where is the enjoyment in a life totally closed off from friends and family? It winds up with you isolated, alienated, and lacking purpose. Live a little. Jeez. I never thought the Prince of all Saiyans would be so scared of living a little!”

He snarled not unlike a wild animal, and not for the first time, she questioned the sanity of the company she kept. 

“Oh, quit acting like someone is keeping you here!” She finally shrieked. “Like the big, bad Prince of all Saiyans is being held hostage on Earth! You’re not! You live with Earth’s inventors of space travel. And yet you’re still here!”

He got in her face. “You always forget your place!” They were nearly touching noses now, baring their teeth at one another.

She suddenly didn’t feel like arguing anymore. “Maybe I just think the only thing you’ve failed at as a prince and a warrior is your failure to adjust,” she said bitterly. “You strut around like you can impose your worldview on everything. Here, our soldiers are taught that adaptability means everything in war. Why not bend the rules a little bit, Vegeta?” Her voice grew tired. “Why not try something new? You don’t have to give up who you are just to experience something different every once in awhile. Maybe a new method of attack would enrich your goals.”

He took a step back, folded his arms around his thick chest, gaze drifting across the staring hard at the floor. “Nothing comes without a price.”

“Maybe that price is worth it,” she quipped, shrugging. “I don’t know. I just follow where my happiness leads me. I’m no philosopher. I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do.” She stood, and placed her hand supportively on Vegeta’s shoulder. He tightened.

“I’m not asking you to love me,” she whispered, eyes roaming over his face. “I just think all three of us would benefit by your presence. I’m not asking you to change. Just...just to consider staying. Not just for us. But for yourself.”

She wished she would have realized sooner that when he admitted that day in his room that he would do things beneath himself for her, that there was something there, between them, that was more than just now-uncaged lust, and without anyone watching it, would just grow and grow and grow, until it was out of their control. 

“I want to train him,” he admitted gruffly, eyes swinging sideways to meet her own.

“I’ll allow it.” She smiled wanly. “All I ask is that you don’t teach him to kill, or teach him to hate. Those are things that are better left to circumstance, am I right?”

The black eyes of destruction incarnate looked into hers, and shut with a sigh. 

“Don’t push me, woman.” 

She slid past him with a quiet smile. 

“I’d never think of it.”


	4. My Place Is Being Fumigated

She wasn’t really sure how to handle this right now, but here her mother sat anyway, beaming at her, legs crossed ladylike in the chair in front of Bulma’s desk, head bobbing slightly with happiness like she were at a really good concert, trying to talk to Bulma—about all things—dating.

“Mom, I really don’t have time for this right now,” Bulma groaned, fingers chatting over the keyboard.

Trunks sat in his exersaucer, the little bouncy chair with toys strung all around, spinning all around and smacking the colorful rattles with gusto. Bulma was thankful, actually, despite the asinine songs and animal sounds erupting from the toy every second. He was pretty distracted by the mess of toys in his line of sight, and at this point in her life, this level of audible chaos was just white-noise anymore.

“Of course you do, honey! A girl always has time for true love,” her mother crooned with optimism, winking at her daughter.

“Ugh.” Bulma’s hands fell heavily onto her desk, palms up in appeal, and she, finally, turned her full attention on her mother.

“Don’t give me that look, Bulma,” her mother’s high pitched, ooey-gooey voice chided her. She loved her mother, but sometimes it was very clear they were not cut from the same cloth. “This is important. I want you to look through that stack of papers and give me at least twenty of your favorite profiles by tomorrow. Then leave the rest to me!”

“Mom.” She gave her mom a heavy stare. She was completely unamused. “I am not interested. Maybe someday I’ll be, but I have way too much on my plate right now than to even consider dating at the moment.”

Her mother’s face fell a little, but just as her glossy red mouth parted to argue with her, Trunks hopped a little too enthusiastically, overcome with excitement by the plush monkey that hung from a toy banana tree, and slipped, knocking his head against the row of toys.

He looked to Bulma with teary eyes, mouth trembling.

Bulma dragged her body across the desk to slick his fine hair back from his face and cooed at him. “Aw, it’s going to be alright, kiddo. You’re gonna be just fine.” Bulma beamed encouragingly down at him.

Trunks, subdued by his mother’s attention, found his thumb, and after a moment of comfort from it he began cautiously bopping the plush monkey again.

Bunny stood, smoothing her short skirt. “Well, I guess, like usual, I can’t make you do anything, dear. But I really think you should think on it. A girl like you will get bored before long!”

“Bleck.” Bulma made a face.

“I’ll remind you tomorrow!” Her mother called as she shut the door behind her, her face still hovering between the doorjamb and the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered as the door finally clicked shut.

What was wrong with that woman? Bulma’s fingers briefly hammered out the rest of her email, before she sighed, and put her hands in her lap.

Her gaze drifted to Trunks, who was staring up at her expectantly.

“What’s up, bud?” Bulma leaned forward again and swatted a toy, which burst into song, and waited for his reaction. All it earned was a small hop, and he was staring at her again. She sighed. “Alright. You’re right. This is lame. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.” Bulma stood and moved around the desk, drawing him from the exersaucer, but not before giving him a few tugs and kicking it lightly before it finally gave him up. “Damned...exer...thing,” she groused.

Her heels clacked against the marble floor as she exited her office and didn’t even bother slowing as she passed her secretary. “I’m going out to lunch with Trunks. If anyone calls, send it to my voicemail!”

Used to Ms. Briefs’ eccentric and erratic behavior, her secretary was already nodding, setting all calls to forward to her voicemail, watching Ms. Briefs small frame exit the room before returning to her Solitaire game. 

\\\\\

Bulma rolled her eyes once again as the flash of a camera caused her to blink. She did her best to ignore it, spooning cake into Trunks’ grubby mouth.

The little guy was nearly conked out, sweet potato smeared across his face and full belly moving slowly up and down with his tranquil breaths.

Bulma wiped his face delicately with a napkin and brushed the stray hair from his eyes. Offhandedly, she wondered at its fine texture, at the wispy, pale lavender tuft that was growing fastest on the top of his head and finding its way more often than not into his eyes. What were the chances that Vegeta’s spawn wouldn’t get his obnoxious, tell-tale hair?

We see whose genes are truly superior, she sneered.

Trunks was officially passed out, soft, pale lids shut fast.

Bulma sighed with a mixture of relief and, oddly, regret. She understood a too-rare nap from Trunks was like stealing time, but now, she just felt kind of alone.

Her fork cut through the cheesecake smoothly, and she pulled at it with her teeth before licking the fork clean. There was another flash, and Bulma bit the fork hard, reigning in her anger. Well that’s going to look real good on the front pages, she chastised herself, although a separate part of her wanted to turn around and strangle the paparazzo behind the hedges of the restaurant patio. 

Younger Bulma would have preened for him. She would have stretched out her long, shapely legs and flipped her hair over her shoulder with a smoldering glance. Younger Bulma wanted all the attention, younger Bulma considered the front page a trophy.

Thirty-something Bulma had become a bit too much like Vegeta and was now entertaining the idea of murder.

She put down the fork, resting with a light clink on the delicate china, and leaned back in her seat, running her hands through her blunt, blue bob before folding them behind her head and watching the clouds scutter across the late afternoon sky.

Who was this new, more mature Bulma, and what had she done with younger Bulma?

She couldn’t believe her mother was pruning through online dating profiles to match her up with some hapless guy. 

Well, yes, she could. Her love life was a shared space with her mother, and always had been, and Bulma had spent quite a few years avoiding being at home to sidestep it. (“Are you there, Prince? It’s me, Bulma.. Let’s meet at your place, not mine. Mine is being...fumigated.”) 

What puzzled her was that she had thought her mother wanted her to continue trying to make it work with Vegeta. Had her mom caught on that they just were no longer a thing? Bulma bristled. Knowing her mother, it probably had nothing to do with feeling defensive of how he’d treated her daughter. Her mother would forgive the guy anything; she doted on him. The platter of pancakes she’d left on the counter for him as Bulma had left for work was a testament to that.

Bulma stared hard at the sky above, birds trailing from one beautiful Japanese maple to the other and sketching across her purview.

Were they really no longer a thing? Part of her, the hard, jaded part of her, yelled “Hell yeah!” But there was a quieter part of her that seemed more hesitant. Let him go, girl, the jaded half spat, to which the other half of her stuck out its tongue.

Was she maybe just still getting over him? These things took awhile, right? Recovering from him, like a train that crashed into her heart, with no one else but her to dampen the fires and clean up the rubble?

She didn’t like to think of herself as bruised by him. She considered herself self-sufficient and bulletproof. Bulma sniffed and folded her arms over her chest this time, frowning lightly. Okay, maybe she was being a little unrealistic.

It wasn’t that she was angry with her mother for all the...help. Really. Her mother was very hands off with parenting, much more of a friend than a parent. Just the way Bulma had liked it as a teenager. Except when it came to men And then she was very hands on. 

Bulma wasn’t frustrated with her mother’s usual antics so much as just frustrated with the idea that a man was the Elmer’s glue for all this mess. Bulma didn't need a man as a financial caretaker, because Bulma was a rich heiress. But she also worked hard for her money, now that she was filling in for her father, who was slowly and quietly retiring from his company. She also didn’t need a man just because she needed to fill a hole in her heart, or to give her something to do. She didn’t need another chore, courting some money hungry, starry eyed sap, with absolutely no lash-quick tongue and razor-sharp mind like Vegeta’s. She had Trunks, she had her parents, and she had good friends....Even if the Androids and the Cell Games had really put a damper on their time together, she thought with some melancholy, thinking of Goku.

Bulma picked up her fork, frowning deeper, and sliced through the soft cheesecake with yearning.

Part of this was just growing up, maybe, and maybe she just needed to come to grips with getting older. She really didn’t mind the physically-getting-older-part. She had always pictured herself getting only more glamorous with age, and that hadn’t changed. High heels, pearls, a commanding air, several covers of Vogue, a fashion icon. It was just...what bothered her about it all, it was only...just...

Why couldn’t she get over Vegeta?

Was it just that she wasn’t ready to leave him behind yet?

She thought she was over him. She really had. He’d left her for a year without a care in the world, left her while she was pregnant with his child!!!, and then ignored them completely when he’d returned!!!! If that wasn’t a sign to get the hell out of the relationship, she didn’t know what was.

But since their chat last week...though he was probably loathe to even remember it...she’d felt less sure, and more ruminating. Damnet! It was stupid. His staying at Capsule Corp wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t change the fact that he didn’t want or wasn’t capable of being a team member with her in this let alone learn how to have an emotionally healthy relationship with someone. And yet, STUPIDLY, like a daydreamy teenaged girl, she was entertaining the question, “What if?”

She had to be real with herself. 

And if she were real with herself, she’d admit that the man she found desirable when she was a teenager living in a daydream did not have the qualities that were up to snuff in a real, grown up relationship. A man who was tall, dark and handsome, the kind of man that women loved to feel like they could ‘fix,’ a real tortured, emotionally neglected, damaged type, was not conducive to her life anymore.

So, she fell for haunted bad guys. Okay, she could admit that. But what girl didn’t like a bad boy? She suddenly imagined Vegeta in leather, and snickered. And then shut up, because he was kind of hot in all that leather.

But her mom was right...Bulma didn’t have the patience for good guys. They were white bread, they were dull, they were a snooze. Regular guys, once in her presence, were doomed. Ill-fated, star-crossed, and destroyed by her stiletto heel and her sharp tongue. By the time they’d sat down and ordered a glass of wine, she’d figured them out, and was just oh. so. bored.

Vegeta was not a regular guy, but it also wasn’t exactly emotionally healthy to even be approximately ten feet in his diameter.

Vegeta was a guy who, when confronted by his own emotional instability—like, every day—it was her fault that he wasn’t progressing, that he wasn’t making gains, that his focus was slippery. Defined in a completely ass backward way, because, if anything, he brought the crazy, and she brought the stability. It was always her fault he couldn’t live a practical life like a Kami-damned adult. Everything would just be normal and right once he had his boot heel on Kakarot’s neck and the masses were chanting his name. That was normalcy to Vegeta. That was the dream—not her.

There she’d been, after the hot nights sweating against each other, pulling at lips with each other’s teeth and tugging at the other’s hair slickly, but here comes the sun, and suddenly, there she was, messing up all of his plans.

There was no future in that. That was one-night-stand stuff, that was get-the-hell-out-of-there-quick stuff. Because what happens with guys like him? Smart, sexy, tortured guys? Flash ahead, five, ten years into the future, he’s still going to film school and working odd jobs while she’s working nights to hold it all together. Then he decides one day that the industry is bullshit, so now he’s getting a PhD in philosophy, theoretically. Except mostly he just smokes pot and speaks in abstractions. And theorizes. And analyzes. And criticizes. And she is in her thirties and would very much like to think of having a family but he says he needs to be in a very, very different place in his life before he even considers such a wild and crazy far-away fantasy world. 

Reality to Vegeta: such a wild and crazy far-away fantasy world. 

If Vegeta were remotely human, that’s the kind of self involved sociopath he’d be: as realistic and future-focused as a plastic bag that floats around in advance of a snowstorm for fifteen minutes straight, and then just sits on the ground getting soggy the rest of the time. He’d be no good for anything real life. He does look really beautiful, floating around. But still. For Vegeta, floating—or being self-absorbed—started out as a way of finding himself and feeling in control in a pretty crappy situation. It was sexy when he first got to Earth! But now floating is just a giant excuse for not settling down yet. It's an excuse to blast off from a relationship the very first second he feels vaguely dissatisfied and never giving his own issues a second glance. 

Back when they were seeing each other, even if it was behind closed doors, he was needy, even if she was the only one who could see it. And serious, and future-thinking in his own way, and maybe she felt like someone that could help him. (Help him clean up all his shit, apparently.) When a guy is serious, and intense, when there’s friction and passion, it’s like lady catnip, but really that kind of guy is just a self centered overly-obsessive slithering self-adoring sea monster.  
The beautiful eyes, tortured family life, moody morsel of perfection that was the man she’d wound up with one way or another was totally impractical. Now that she was a mother, now that her father was handing her the reigns to his corporate giant, she saw the world through different eyes. And mature Bulma knew there was no future in that.

If she had learned anything with Yamcha, it was that she had expectations in a relationship, and that it was okay to have expectations. For instance. She learned that she expects her man not to be a philanderer, and that’s a totally legitimate expectation. But she also learned things like, when to call it quits (although that took a long time to figure out), when to stand up for herself, when they were better off as friends, when the romance had died out and all that remained was the shell of what once had been. Some boys were looking for a woman like they were looking for something to hang on their wall, like they were an interior designer seeking not to have a valuable relationship with a customer, but only to add to their portfolio. 

She sighed, realizing she’d started to wax real morose. In response, Trunks sighed in his sleep, shifting his little balled up fists next to his head and resettling into sleep. The corners of her mouth turned up softly. She pushed the plate to the side, finished, and as if on cue, a server appeared at her side and silently removed her half eaten cheesecake.

As he turned away, Bulma stopped him.

“Sir?”

The young man halted, looking cowed. “Yes, Ms. Briefs?”

Bulma threw her thumb behind her, gesturing at the paparazzo hovering in the bushes not-so-stealthily.

“Get him out of here.”

“Y-y-yes ma’am. Right away.”

As a group of bodyguards spilled out from the cafe, the restaurant used to fielding celebrities, and advanced on the snoop who was already trying to dash out of the bushes, Bulma sipped her glass of water, the lemon wedge floating between ice cubes and the glass slippery in her fingers with the summer heat.

There was all sorts of potential for chaos with Vegeta staying with them, and asking him to stay maybe wasn’t that practical of an idea. But she’d had a gut reaction, a hunch as he sat there fuming in her office chair, and Bulma always followed her heart, even if it led her to stupid, dangerous places, even though she was mature Bulma now, and should know better. 

There was scuffling behind her, and Bulma lit a cigarette even as the sound of a camera thudded dully on the ground.

She didn’t care if he was the Prince of all Saiyans. She didn’t care if maybe she wasn’t over him. She didn’t care if maybe he was permanently dysfunctional. This time she was getting what she wanted, and by Kami, she would have a partner in this stuff somehow.


	5. Grace And Poise

“There’s this one...and this one...and, ooh, what about this one?”

Bulma and her mother were sitting knee deep in piles of online dating profile printouts, and Bunny was struggling to keep up with all of those that Bulma had replied “meh” to. Those were Bunny's “Yes’s.” Luckily, there were dishes spilling over with pastries scattered among the mess, and Bulma plucked one from the platter beside her and popped it into her mouth.

Bulma took the piece of paper from her mother lazily and pretended to glance at it. Then came to a halt. “Oooh, this one’s a keeper.” She thrust the paper into her mother’s face as Bunny’s eyes grew wide with excitement. Before her mother could get her hopes up any farther, Bulma burst into laughter. “Look at that handlebar mustache. Why would you even put that one in there?”

Bunny frowned, well-shaped brows arching. Bulma’s love life was pushing the limits of Bunny’s patience. “Well, excuse me. I just printed off all of the online profiles for West City for you, is all. Don’t hold it against me.”

“You did what?” Bulma’s eyes bulged. “Well, that explains why we’re sitting in a heap of paper.”

“If you just picked one, we could get up and be done with it!” Bunny’s mouth twisted down with despair.

Bulma couldn’t help it; she smiled wide. “Oh, Mom. You poor thing.” She sighed and rolled her eyes, the corner of her mouth curling in a smirk. “Give me the next one.”

Bunny held out a sheet of paper, and Bulma took it, looking at it with one eyebrow arched in feigned consideration.

“Let’s see.” Her blue eyes ran over the text. “Male. 33. Works downtown at the Bloch Building. Hometown: East City.” She cast a doubting look at mother. Her mother gestured at her to go on. “His profile picture...oh Kami, can’t believe I’m doing this...I guess...he’s kind of handsome?” 

Bunny’s face lit up, and Bulma immediately regretted her concession. 

“As handsome as Vegeta?” Bunny whispered coyly. 

“Oh, Mom!” Bulma yelled, throwing the paper at Bunny in a fit of impatience.

The paper was snatched out of the air between them, and both of the women looked up in surprise before their mouths dropped in horror.

Vegeta stared down at them from his nose, gripping the paper. Slowly, with painful deliberateness, Vegeta unfurled the paper and scanned the body of text. Bunny clapped her hands over her cheeks in embarrassment, and Bulma felt the floor drop out from under her.

Vegeta’s face scrunched up with confusion. “What is this?”

“Nothing,” Bulma and Bunny answered in small voices.

Vegeta’s eyes narrowed at the women, before tossing the paper, where it floated down to rest on the pile sprawled between them.

As he turned away, the women shared a quick look, but Vegeta’s gruff voice penetrated their sinking relief. 

“You could do much better.”

He opened the fridge, turning his back on the women to scour the fridge for food. 

Bulma’s fingers inched up her face to hide the scarlet blush creeping up her cheeks, but her fingers parted just in time for her to peer between them and see her mother’s eyes sparkled with secret mirth. 

As the Saiyan shuffled through items in the fridge, Bunny leaned forward. “Just when were you going to tell me he was staying with us?” Her mother chastised her in a whisper, looking somehow both horrified and jubilant. 

“You didn’t know?” Bulma’s voice was muffled in her hands. “He’s been back for a few weeks now.”

“I haven’t seen him since before Trunksie was born!” Bunny cried softly.

Bulma sneered. “Oh, you just now figured out he’s been gone all this time?” 

“Well, why didn’t you say so! Why are we even looking at all these, then, anyway?”

“Because,” she hissed, “Vegeta and I are not together.”

“Well, why on earth not?” Bunny’s voice rose petulantly.

“Because,” Bulma growled as quietly as sanely possible, “we’re not!”

“That’s silly!” Her mother exclaimed, clapping her hands together wistfully. “You guys were made for each other!”

“WE WERE NOT!” Bulma shot upwards to her feet, just as Trunks emerged from underneath a pile of papers. 

Three sets of eyes were on her. She fumed, growing redder with embarrassment. “Excuse me,” she said through clenched teeth as she turned on her heel and made her way out the front door.

She wasn’t even aware she was stomping until she’d reached the separate dome that held her father’s pets and her mother’s gardens. Once she realized she was making a fool of herself, marching around petulantly, she forced her legs to walk more naturally.

She threw the door open and made her way through the thick foliage, heading toward the greenhouse at the heart of the building, where a number of exotic flowers and succulents thrived under her mother’s care. 

Now that she was inside the thick, balmy silence of the dome, she had a moment to feel really, really stupid. Whyyyyyy did she just cut and run like that? In front of him, for Kami’s sake? She had a duty to herself and Trunks to be as in control around him as humanly possible. A mother always knew what to do, right? A mother was graceful, even around loud-mouthed, betraying idiots. 

Maybe her belief that she’d grown up was a bit premature. 

“Stupid, stupid,” she muttered, slumping into a bench beside the koi pond, her head falling into her hand.

“I believe this is yours.”

She startled, and with increasing dread, pried her neck from her shoulders to look at the man she knew to be standing in front of her.

And came face to face with baby Trunks, who dangled upside down in front of her, looking absolutely delighted by it.

Her hands shot out and grabbed him, turning him around and squeezing him to her. “You can’t hold a baby upside down,” she admonished Vegeta.

“I just did.” His face was placid, but his voice carried the edge of sarcasm.

“Well, all the blood could have gone to his head, and he could have gotten really...light headed,” she finished obtusely.

It was Vegeta’s turn to roll his eyes. “He’s Saiyan. I could have held him there for a lightyear and he’d still be laughing.”

“Ugh.” She plopped Trunks on her lap firmly and gave Vegeta a dirty look. “Men.”

Vegeta crossed his arms over his chest and looked sidelong at her.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, Bulma broke it clumsily. “Thank you?” She issued lamely. “For, uh, bringing me Trunks?”

Vegeta snorted and sprung upwards, floating. “Spare me.” He flew leisurely above the garden and through the foliage until he was out of sight.

She watched him go with self-disparaging, wry acceptance. Bulma once again hung her head into her palms. “What is wrong with me.”

A chubby fist wrapped around a tuft of her hair and pulled, hard. Tears sprung to her eyes. “Ow!” She complained, looking at Trunks aggrieved. “Now you’re ganging up on me, too?”

Trunks gave her a hard look, and she sighed, turning her chin on her palm away from him morosely.

And then her eyes widened. 

Her head whipped back around to Trunks. “You know what?” She asked, filled with wonder. “That’s the first time your father’s ever held you!” A smile stretched across Bulma’s face. She began bouncing Trunks on her knee giddily. “Yay!” She squealed, and the peal of Trunks’ giggles filled the greenhouse.

````````

She’d ordered out for dinner, shared her pizza with Trunks alone in the dining room, and then swiftly plopped his butt into the bath, the water shaded red with pizza sauce. How did babies get so messy so quickly?! One calm bath before bedtime wasn’t so much a misnomer as it was a bald-faced lie. 

Once she’d wiped sauce from between all his rolls and lathered the fine hair on his head, she wrapped him up in his froggy towel and carried him into her sitting room on her hip, the tv the only light flickering in the dark room.

Each small limb carefully tugged through the armholes and legholes of his pajamas, and then Bulma kissed his impossibly soft cheek as her nimble fingers snapped the last button. She crossed her legs and rocked him back and forth in the dark, the sound of the movie at a hush, until he fell asleep heavily, cupped against her chest.

Carefully, OH SO carefully, she carried him to the crib in the nursery and planted him softly onto the sheets, small printed elephants silently trumpeting his arrival. She thanked Kami a dozen times that he didn’t wake up—a truly once in a lifetime happening—and closed the door to his room softly.

She ambled back to her room in the dark hallway, settling bonelessly into the sitting room couch in a sprawl.

Her tv flashed in the dark, but she didn’t pay it much attention. Her eyelids fluttered drowsily, her toes digging deeper into the blanket piled at her feet. The events on the tv grew distant, and as her lids fluttered heavily their last few times, a silhouette emerged from the shadows. 

She felt surreally that, if she followed, the shadow would lead her into sleep. But as it approached her, pulling from the dark and substantiating in front of her, her eyelids snapped open and she bolted upright. She threw herself back instinctively, nearly climbing the back of the couch. 

Only now did she recognize the figure’s hair.

“Vegeta!” She cried shrilly. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?! Can’t you knock like a normal person?”

A light harrumph was her only answer before the figure advanced into the light, obscuring her view of the tv. 

“Pitiful.” He clucked his tongue. “Blades of grass under my boot cower with less drama than you.”

“Oh, can it!” She chucked a throw pillow in his direction, which bounced weakly off his knees.

He was stubbornly solid in front of her.

She groused and settled back on her butt, folding her arms over her chest, possibly pouting. Yeah, being a Mom automatically made a girl real graceful. 

“Let’s not beat around the bushes anymore,” Vegeta issued suddenly. “I am staying here on Earth. I will be training Trunks in my style of martial arts and defense. It is time we set some ground rules.”

Her eyes widened. Bulma’s mouth twisted suddenly into a warped smile. “Oh, you will be setting the ground rules, huh? Oh, do tell.”

“Whatever happened between us is of little importance. You may continue being the boy’s caretaker, but I will govern how he is trained in survivability. No one else.”

Bulma felt steam erupt from her ears. She’d been too nice, letting him stay without complaint, because now he thought he had the upper hand. She should have yelled the ground rules into his bloody ears the moment he’d fallen into her guest room bed.

She shot upwards and closed the distance between them. “How dare you!” She was well beyond grace at this point. “You have some nerve abandoning him before he was born, then expecting us all to take care of you again, and then demanding that you have ANY rights over him!”

“He’s an heir to the Saiyan legacy, and he will be socialized as one!”

“What, because it’s convenient for you now? Because you have nothing else better to do?” She lambasted him. He flinched slightly, and she knew she’d hit a nerve. 

Naturally, she kept poking. “If you think for even a second that I will allow you to come into my house and dictate to me how I should act and who will and won’t be interacting with my son, you have another thing coming!”

Vegeta was really simmering now. “I am the Prince--”

“Of no one!” She shrieked. “It’s time someone finally had the guts to tell you! Now that Goku is gone,” Bulma snarled, “there is no one you lord over. Especially me and my son.” 

Aaaaaaand he looked scary angry now. “You overstep your bounds,” he issued dangerously.

“Look at me! I’m overstepping my bounds!” Bulma stamped her foot out erratically.

Vegeta shook with anger.

“What happened between us can’t just be erased, Vegeta! You can’t just wipe it out like you wipe everything else out of your purview! I’m here, and Trunks was born of it, and now, for once, you have to deal with it.” She was nearly spitting between her clenched teeth.

“I should end you for talking to me this way!”

This was the first time he’d ever threatened her. There had been many, many arguments; but he’d never raised a hand to her. 

“Will you?” She opened her arms wide. “Would you?”

His gloved fingers were clenched hard at his hips, and his straight teeth glinted in the low light. 

“Your only solution to everything is to kill it. Why not me, too?”

“CAN’T YOU SEE I AM TRYING SOMETHING NEW?”

His right hand fisted over his heart, his face twisting with anger and anguish. “I am trying to do the ‘right’ thing, and still you punish me for it!” 

Bulma felt sobering embarrassment creep up on her. “You can’t just make demands of me, Vegeta. You should have learned that lesson three years ago!”

“Then why do you think you can hold me, of all people, to different rules?” 

You punish me for it. 

Like, like she was the one who was the bully in the relationship, the one who’d broken his heart, the one who’d left him…

“Because you left me, Vegeta!” She cried. She couldn’t mask her pain with flippancy any longer. “You just discarded me like I was some one night encounter, like I could have been any woman. And right after we’d learned I was carrying your child. I was wide-open and vulnerable, and of course, yon sadistic strategist saw that and hit me where it hurts.” She was croaking unattractively now, tears pooling in her vision. “It was your child, Vegeta. No one else’s. Yours. And I was yours. I was loyal. I may have not meant anything to you, but you somehow became my life before you left. Everything I did was for you. The bots, the maintenance to the GR, your laundry, your food. I didn’t do it because I felt obligated, I didn’t even do it to help save all our hides. I did it for you. Stupidly. I thought the attention you gave me meant that you appreciated me. All those nights, all those t-t-times we shared….And then you just left me. You abandoned him. I have every right to make demands of you. You have no power here anymore. You gave it up the day you left.”

Oh, Kami, she didn’t mean to lose control like this. But had she ever had control from the day he stepped out of that blasted pod? She felt the hot tears make their obstinate paths down her cheeks, and brushed them away impatiently. “You are so blind to anything but your own feelings,” she sniffled. “I just want you to acknowledge mine, for once.”

Vegeta stood in front of her, watching, but she couldn’t determine his expression, warbling in her teary vision, wasn’t sure she wanted to see his mouth had curled into a moue of disgust for her. 

“I may not have anything else to do,” he finally admitted, deep as the dark. “But I...I...”

Her mouth parted, face twisting with unknown desires, waiting.

“...I want to do it. Can you not torture me about it?”

His face was lit up in the stark monochrome of the tv, sharp features contoured on one side of his face in the half light, the other half as penetrable as the dark side of the moon. 

She stared up at him and bit her lip. “Then let’s set some ground rules,” she finally whispered. “I will be considerate of your...space, and experiences, if you can be considerate of mine.” Bulma exhaled deeply. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked at him plaintively, though it didn’t make her look any less strong. “Maybe what we had...is over. But if you’re going to, going to stay, then we will have to talk to one another sometimes. And...we should probably act respectfully toward one another.”

His lips, the lips she once thought were beautiful, full but flat and masculine, they straightened from their downwards curl and under his long lashes she saw she had his full attention.

Was this really as much as they could say to one another without fighting? Bulma experienced a tearing pain, conflicted. They couldn’t even get past hello. How had something ever had room to grow between them in the first place?

She angled her face up towards his. Waiting, always waiting, for his move.

But her unwavering optimism broke the tension. “Maybe we should learn to just be in the same room, huh?” She smiled sheepishly. “Today has been a hard lesson in that.” Bulma looked upwards into his face, but he didn’t give anything away. Shut up tight, per usual. She sighed through her nose.

“Vegeta...please sit down.” She gestured at the couch. “Let’s start this right now, shall we? Sit, and we’ll practice being in the same room together. I’ll even let you pick the movie.”

She could see his restraint wavering, so she grabbed his wrist, and pulled. 

He didn’t budge, but then again, she wasn’t expecting to do anything but make her point. The glove felt familiarly silky beneath her touch. 

“Please,” she asked stolidly. 

They stared at one another in the darkness, measuring the other, measuring the wisdom of it. 

Finally, Vegeta pulled away from her hand, looking askant at the tv, that earlier vulnerability gleaming.

She knew he was going to decline. Did he really feel that uncomfortable being around her? Was it because he...didn’t want to lead her on? Or did her room have too many memories?

With resolve, she moved around him, placed her hands on his shoulder blades, and pushed.

“What are you doing?” He asked incredulously over his shoulder. 

“I won’t break out the booze, because we both know where that leads,” she said, smiling wryly, but pushing once more. She thought she saw him blush, but probably imagined it. “But you need to sit down and pick a movie before I get angry with you again.” He wasn’t budging, but he looked awfully disturbed, so she moved to his side, squeezing his bicep. He gawked at her apprehensively.

“Just as friends, Vegeta. Watch a movie with a friend. Unless you’d rather keep this ‘business professional?’” She cleared her throat of the note of disappointment. 

His skin under her hand was warm and hard, and she dropped her hand suddenly, realizing she’d made them both uneasy, touching him.

“I don’t think it wise.” He stepped away from her and was already at the door. “I will take the boy tomorrow afternoon.” His tone was as deferential to her as it would get.

She didn’t know why she felt so uncomfortable and melancholy, but she did.

“Okay,” she answered faintly. “Sorry.”

He turned a bit toward her at her tone, pausing, face in the shadows, before he closed the door behind himself.

Bulma fell into the couch cushions and dropped her forehead into her palm. “Stupid,” she chided herself, tangled up in feelings, feelings, and more feelings. 

Where had they all come from?


	6. Ghost Town

The hero had arrived; the maiden was saved. The woman’s bosom heaved with anticipation; the man undid the stays of her dress to unpackage his reward.

Bulma threw the book on the floor.

She stretched, turned onto her belly, and pressed her pillow against her face as if to suffocate herself.

A raunchy romance book after a languorous bubble bath, candles strewn all about the room, and Trunksie with her parents tonight. The stars and the planets aligned, and all she wanted in the whole world was to be seduced by a trashy story.

And she couldn’t even enjoy it.

What a sham. What a Hallmark card. The ghost of that sexy hero fantasy was haunting her very compound, and still these crooks kept making money off romance books. Bulma was unraveling and the man who held the string was deaf and mute and just kept walking away disinterestedly with the ties that held her together.

Just Bulma, a superbly erotic and badly written story, and her two fingers tonight, and she couldn’t even suspend disbelief for one measly second. Vegeta had seen to that, she groused. 

Ah, yes. The father of her child. How was he doing? Bulma was happy to tell everyone just how her baby’s daddy fared.

Fine, to Bulma’s fury. Just fine. He’d just taken off with his guy pals last week, Roshi and Oolong even, for some ill-conceived space adventure he’d taken less than a minute to jump ship for. Bulma’s teeth had nearly ground into paste as he walked up the ramp of a stranger’s ship without even looking back. Yeah, fine, go. Go have fun, boys. We women will just stay here to take care of your children and keep house and home, and we’ll have dinner on the table for you when you get back, no big d.

The two weeks prior, he didn’t show up for dinner, she rarely ran into him, and he had Trunks for every other day from 2-4, when he sat doing who knows what with Trunks in the gravity chamber (and it damned well better not be with the gravity engaged). They couldn’t avoid each other, now that they were trying to do this parenting thing together, and yet there was barely any evidence a real flesh-and-blood man lived here. 

Though Vegeta’s definition of parenting was world’s apart from her own. Real father of the year stuff so far. Son, hit this and try to kill it. You did it? No praise for you. Now give me a hundred push ups. Vegeta had already been educated on her opinion of his ‘training’ with Trunks, and he didn’t appreciate it much for some reason. And evidently everything was hi-diddly-ho with him.

The boss bitch, streetwise A-type that lay under Bulma’s skin understood that this wasn’t a disadvantage. They had had a white hot affair, a child had been created of it, they had mutually separated, and now they were trying to take care of that child while leading their respective lives peacefully. 

So why was Bulma so dissatisfied?

Bulma tore the negligee from her body and flung it at the wall, pacing. 

Because. Because..because….Well, what did boss bitch say? 

Boss bitch said she, she needed to be acknowledged. Because she wasn’t over it. 

Because she still had f-f-f-f-

-f-fffff

-ffff-feelings for him.

And, see, that was madness.

Bulma broke it down for boss bitch.

Vegeta was like an old-timey prospector. With a pickaxe in one hand and his meager belongings in a satchel behind him, Vegeta had come a’mining for gold when he’d stepped off her ship. Seeking that brilliant, elusive goal drove him singularly. He wanted to be rich, he wanted to be powerful, and he needed gold, gold, gold. All of his efforts and affects were to be invested in the dream, and everything was a piece to be played in a lusty, impatient game for gold out here in the wild west of planets outside the PTO’s periphery. 

Except her. 

It was all good when she was doing his laundry and making him breakfast. But he had this thing called pride, and he had this thing called a mouth, and he couldn’t just let her boss him around or smart mouth him, could he? Except putting her in her place was evidently Vegeta’s favorite foreplay and had led to some pretty sweaty nights between the sheets. Nights which had been so Kami-damned hot.

That wasn’t a part of the game plan. She wasn’t part of the endgame. What use was she? She had no use. No functionality, no purpose in a world that was constructed entirely to accumulate gold.

Yonder prospector had certainly enjoyed her. But after having a malfunction trying to comprehend her presence in the game plan, logic seizing on ‘pregnant: do not compute’—he’d thrown her to the wolves. Much better. Now everything could proceed logically and efficiently. Now nothing could thwart or slow his thrust for gold. 

Except, now he had gold, and it wasn’t what he expected. There was no parade, no fanfare. The currency was now defunct because there was no more competition. His success was as jarring as biting into tin. 

No longer a flesh and blood man, but as hollowed out as she, and they drifted through the compound at night when everyone was asleep, through their ghost town, deaf and dumb and just moaning for that very thing that had been the fall of them in the first place. Gold, howled Vegeta. Vegeta, she cried.

What a couple’a dumbasses, boss bitch tsked. 

She blew the candles out and pulled her overalls over hips no one would ever appreciate again. 

Her lab fluorescents hummed on. This was real, this bot atop her desk and the sautering iron in her glove. The metal rod as close to a man’s affections as she’d get tonight. 

Her man had been hot to the touch once; he’d left a burning ember flaring with his every departure and arrival. White-knuckled grip on the sautering iron, it was cold and smooth, contrary to her man, who’d been rough and hot, his mouth at night as generous as it was withholding by day. Her man had been flesh and blood and now he was just a memory, and she could travel his insides, run her fingers through the roughshod architecture of his ghost, feel the whip of the dry breeze and the tumbleweeds tear against her shins as they bumbled by. Here, she could feel, here he’d been, the scorched bot under her fingers. And here, too, her belly, still flat but softer. He had made a ghost town out of her, too, and she could see through her own insides to the map of his fingertips that led right to her fall.

She was tired of grieving for what could have been and for the woman he’d hurt. She was a new woman now, had evolved into a different, harder species, and she was as solid as the wrench she put to metal.

No helpless maiden here. She cranked the wrench, the bolt loosening with her strength. No woman in need of a man to make her whole. She thrust her body weight down onto the wrench, the bot shivering with her effort. She didn’t need no stinkin’ knight, the one who’d rode up on a white stallion (her ship) in gleaming armor (her armor) and a crown of roses (her friend’s blood). She’d been naive once, and thought he’d saved her—roughly up against the wall, spread over his bed with her head banging on the side, or ass on the beeping cacophony of (her) ship’s console. And she’d spread her arms for him wide, her noble warrior, and she was his steed and he rode her hard and only later did she realize she was but a tool to get him somewhere and not the purpose itself. Women in romances were the prize but her prize for loving a man like that was a hole in her heart that the wind sang through as she limped along after he left. Her hand slipped and the wrench clacked to the floor, the momentum causing her to fall forward and smash her cheek into the bot, tearing open flesh on peeled metal before she caught herself on her palms. 

She flung herself into her chair with her head in her hands and tried not to cry with incredulity. And failed.

Her stupid cheek stung but who gave a damn, who gave a damn? Who did she have now that Goku was gone, now that she’d left one discontented/discontenting man for another? She had to be solid for herself and for her son, but here she sat proving herself a real traitor, sobbing into her shredded palms and kicking the secondary office chair away with her heel belligerently. 

She distantly heard the chair she’d kicked groan with the weight of somebody and her file drawer open. She didn’t need to look up to know who it was. A shanty with slipshod poles, chin on his busted knuckles and an eyebrow leaking blood steadily over a black eye. Legs spread with exhaustion, he pulled out a wad of cotton and a roll of bandage tape, handing it to her silently.

She took the supplies without bothering to look up and turned to her desk to douse the cotton in antiseptic and antibacterial cream. She cleaned the broken skin on her cheekbone, blood swelling in the gash, grimacing, splicing bandage tape from the roll with her teeth and patting it over the gash.

She toed the floor, sending her chair to the small fridge where her ice packs waited. She plucked two from the freezer, put one to her face, and tossed the other in Vegeta’s direction. He caught it without looking up, resting the ice on his brow with a dull expression. 

The shared silence wasn’t heavy but companionable as they slumped in their chairs, ghosts gazing at the past. He was as familiar a piece of this room as the furniture, because he’d once been a prospector, digging for gold here. She turned to the bot, solid as she was solid, and there was something soothing about sitting here with the specter of her last three years, something almost wholesome as he drifted on the banks of the dead. Standing by the river Styx as always when he was present, and hearing, not the regrets or the ripping keens of the dead, but the hard, glacial, glaring reality of living. 

The ghost hovered in her vision, watching her, unheeded. A prelude—hard, glacial, unmoving, like the knight, like the machine, like her.


	7. Moon

He remembers two broken fingers and two gorillas with mustaches shrubbed under their noses, glaring lime green polos, with faces ugly as trolls.

“Two braces,” he’d said over the din of the party, “let me in.”

The bouncers with the mashed in faces look at each other. A second longer and Vegeta will quit playing nice and just snap their necks, but they nod indifferently, unaware of their very close call tonight.

Vegeta makes his way through the door and into the revelry, a churning crowd of dancing and laughter and clinking glasses, dragging his legs behind him. He doesn’t much care that the nearest guests gasp and stumble over each other to give him a wide berth, bent crooked and soaked in blood, cutting a slow but determined swath through the festivities. The more space they give him, the better, and he limps to the one person in the whole blasted universe who can make this better. He needs her, even if she doesn’t need him, as if she had drawn a line from his heart to hers and wheels him in whenever the whim strikes her. But at the moment there is only the taste of pennies in his mouth and the revelers, giving him a quiet berth as he drags his legs to the only woman in his whole universe.

Here comes the Prince, he thinks with bile, and this is the Prince’s topsy turvy induction as his court gapes around him, the future king lugging his feet behind him, expressions of shock behind carnival masks. 

The masks blur and he’s falling before he can comprehend it, without the strength to catch himself on his palms, and his cheekbone cracks with his dead weight on the pavers. 

He feels the woman before he sees her. Rolling him over, her face a full moon against a viscous black tunnel shivering round her. She’s the moon he orbits.

“Two braces,” he tells her, lifting his two crooked fingers to her line of sight, even as stars wink around her. His moon, the one he orbits.

“You need a hell of a lot more than two braces, you dimwit,” he hears her snap, and he unwittingly smiles at her snarl even as it breaks unevenly with choked emotion.

He is lifted effortlessly onto a stretcher by the indifferent hands of bots, stomach rebelling against the heave-ho as he’s jostled through revelers and down into the miracle she holds in the darkness, and he’s not completely unaware that she holds his good hand as they make their way through the crowd.

````````

He blinks awake in tawny light. Not sunlight, but lamp light, and he blinks and tries to sit up, but some muscle resists and seizes his lower back and he sucks in air.

“Idiot,” he hears, and it’s as if she’s smoothed his fur, and he lays back down contentedly this time.

“What were you thinking? That if you chop yourself up into tiny little pieces it’d make you stronger more quickly?” The wheels of an office chair spin his way, and he sees her cheerful face above his, her mane of curls a halo in the lamp light. “Idiot,” she says again, and bops his nose with her fingertip.

He catches her hand in his with breakneck reflexes and preens as her face droops with surprise. He pulls her out of the chair and on top of him. 

“You’re hurt! I’ll hurt you! Stop!”

“You won’t,” he assures her, even as his ribs complain of her weight, and he tucks her hands between their bellies so she can’t move and kisses her petulant mouth. The kiss has less finesse than he’d have liked, but still, her mouth opens to him without much resistance and they kiss in the tawny lamp light.

“You don’t need to hurt yourself to have an excuse to come and see me,” she grins, and he presses his mouth harder into hers as punishment. 

“Seeing you is torture,” he lies, using his good hand to sweep her hair out of their faces and take it in his fist possessively. “I would never.”

“Play nice or I’ll pull the morphine drip right out of you.”

“I dare you,” he says, nipping at her bottom lip, and as she laughs into his curling mouth, there’s the sound of someone clearing their throat at the door.

Bulma’s jumps off him and stands at attention. “Daddy,” she breathes, chuckling nervously. “What are you—Do you need—”

“Just seeing how our patient is doing,” the old doctor comments drolly, as if he hadn’t walked in on anything out of the ordinary, and Vegeta rolls his eyes, throwing his forearm over his eyes and hoping he’ll fall to sleep in a medicated stupor immediately. It’s not the first time someone has walked in on them, and though Vegeta could care less (unless it was her mother, who intimidates him), there’s something about sharing her with other people that makes him irrationally angry. 

It’s not until she’s prying his arm off his eyes and he’s blinking up at her groggily that she smiles with mirth down at him.

“He’s gone,” she reassures him, wheeling away to replace his bag of fluids. “Just another hour on this thing and then you can escape. You’re healing faster than it probably took you to wind up in this condition.” She sends him a look meant to intimidate.

“Give it a rest,” he growls, reaching out to yank the cords from his arms, but she prevents him by swatting at him. She tucks her fingers under him, pushing him up, straining to get him to turn onto his back until he decides he’s picked on her enough and helps.

“Where is your dress,” he comments to Bulma’s surprise, face down now in the pillows, and she surveys his back, wide shoulders that whittle down into a lean stomach, white scars squirming against bronze skin. 

“Didn’t want to get it bloody,” she explains quietly.

“Bullshit,” he declares crassly, though it’s muffled by the pillow. “You like it.”

She pinches his side in rebuke, and then her thumbs press in between his shoulders, massaging, earning his smothered cry. “I never like it. It’s always your blood.”

“Would happily make it someone else’s,” he suggests, earning a reproving poke before her hands are kneading out his shoulders again.

“There’s no need for a dress like that when you’re operating on a man,” she explains sullenly, and something deep in his back pops, and a relieved gush of air escapes his lips. She always knows just where to push.

“Go back to your party, Bulma,” he commands after a quiet moment, staring at the white tiled wall in the low light impassively, though he feels the familiar slink-slink of his grinding teeth.

“Don’t wanna.” The butt of her palms press into his lower back and are again rewarded with a pop and a deep sigh. Her hand rests on the curve of his shoulder. “I...I’d rather be down here.”

Vegeta knows this is as close as they’re going to get to telling each other the truth.

````````

Vegeta is cagey because she’s walking him up to his room. 

While their rooms are separated by only a few dozen feet, she hasn’t set foot this far down the hall since he left a year and a half ago. The hall is silent. It’s a few hours from dawn, Vegeta can feel it. Her shoes on the hardwood place surely and softly down the hall. Vegeta wants nothing more than a shower and to fall into bed, but he’s piqued by her quiet presence by his side. He watches her sidelong, wondering at her angle, what she’s thinking. 

She’s the one to reach out and turn his doorknob, walking in before he can protest and headed straight for the bathroom, leaving him standing in the doorway in dumb befuddlement. She’s back before he can puzzle her actions out. He hears running water now. She leads him to the bed, and he’s so tired, and empty, and aching inside with the emptiness that he does not protest.

It’s the first time she’s really touched him since they learned of her pregnancy almost two years ago, nervous gestures in her sitting room not withstanding. As she pulls his top over his head, Vegeta finally snarls weakly, but she yanks it off defiantly and pushes him back into the pillows callously, surveying the gash above his hips, chewing her lip in quiet horror at the deeply mottled bruise on his side.

“Just who were you fighting this time?” She doesn’t bother waiting for a reply, answering it caustically. “Yourself?” His flesh peeling back from the gash and puckering, already blushing red with infection. He doesn’t miss her jab.

Because he’s tired, he quietly endures it, though he knows faintly that this is against her rules. Sensible rules. No touching. No going into the other’s room. No more late hours working on bots and gravity chambers. No more patching up or surgeries. She had retracted her grace. 

He’s staring at the ceiling, watching the fan whip clockwise above him. In the back of his mind, he’s trying to remember why this feels so natural when her fingertips slide down the ridge of his abs as she threads the needle and he tightens involuntary.

“I’m sorry, did that hurt you? I have some numbing ointment I left in your drawer.” She leans over him to grab it, and he barks “No,” roughly, and doesn’t want to examine the disappointment he feels as her brows clash down and her lips thin. 

He’s in and out as she works on him, and because they’ve done this many times, he resists flinching as she sews him back up. She tapes an ice pack to his blackened side, and then he feels her fingertip slide across his brow, surveying, split but no longer weeping blood into his swollen eye.

With breakneck speed, he catches her hand in his, staring hard at her.

“When I came back you said you would no longer be taking care of me.” His exhaustion is laced with wry humor.

Her hair is different than it was before he left. Straight and short now, her face harder, less prone to crinkling with laughter and salty rejoinders.

She glares, trying to extricate her hand from his own and failing. 

“The rules still stand.” She scowls. “You just look like shit tonight.” She shrugs, trying to appear desensitized and tough. “You helped me, so I helped you. It’s instinctive. It’s etiquette. Anyone would have done it.”

“No,” he argues, tugging on her hand weakly, though rough enough that she falls and catches herself on his bare chest, and her eyes widen with panic and confusion. “Not just anyone.”

He remembers the woman sobbing into her bloody hands as he pushes past the lab doors, and he remembers the woman laughing down into his mouth, and he pulls both women closer so that they cannot look away. 

“You did, idiot.” And he looks at her hard, willing her to understand. 

She pushes herself off his chest with her palms, turns the bath off, and heads for the door.

“Like hell I’m going to take your boots off for you,” she snaps snidely, and as she slips out, Vegeta unwittingly smiles.


	8. The Night

It happened as she was playing a game of cards with Yamcha.

"Three of spades," he drolled, laying the card between them on the pile as they surveyed their hands calculatingly.

Trunks lay fast asleep in the bassinet beside them, though he made a noise as if distressed while he dreamt, and without looking up from her cards, Bulma rocked the bassinet gently with her toe.

"Ha!" Bulma's excitement punctuated the contemplative silence of the card table, the only light a small reading lamp pooling on the table. It was well past midnight, and the tv chattered low behind them. "Queen of spades." She slid her own card into the pile.

"Tch." Yamcha made a noise, scratching at the fuzz growing on his jaw and frowning down at the fanned cards in his hand.

"Give up. I win." Bulma absorbed her hand smugly, and then pinned Yamcha with a grin. "Admit it. You're through."

"I will not," Yamcha replied testily, eyes scanning his hand urgently. "This isn't over."

Bulma popped a fried cheese ball into her mouth and shrugged.

There was a sound behind her, and they both turned in their chairs to peer through the dark.

A silhouette emerged from the lounge's shadowed doorway.

Bulma's brows drew together. She knew that profile.

She watched Vegeta looming in the doorway with some reservation. "Do you need something, Vegeta," she asked indifferently from over her shoulder.

He stepped from the dark, all dried blood and bruises, face etched with exhaustion. "No," he replied forcefully but quietly, and forced his legs to move, one in front of the other. Bulma and Yamcha shared a glance, and then Bulma stood with a pinch of concern, pulling out the empty chair between them.

"Sit down," she ordered, waiting, and though Vegeta's face tightened with the indignity of her tone, he fell into the chair in a sprawl.

Bulma watched it all with a frown. "You gonna be okay, buddy?"

To her and Yamcha's unease, a low, grating laugh burbled up from the Prince, and he hung his head on the back of the chair.

Her eyes met Yamcha's. He glanced back and forth between Bulma and the bleeding Saiyan at their side with distress, as if saying, Do something already! She shrugged, her head shaking back and forth stubbornly, hair swinging at her chin. What was she gonna do? Vegeta was a lost cause. He beat himself up, then he lashed out when she tried to help him. She'd rode that carousel one too many times.

She put her nose into the air and looked down at her hand to make her point, and slid one more card between them with her fingertips. "Ace of spades," she enlightened Yamcha testily, and Yamcha sighed and folded, pillowing his head in his arms in defeat.

And then he stood, chair scraping the floor. "I guess I'll get going. It's my bedtime."

"Already?" Bulma complained. She hadn't had much company since she'd became pregnant, but Yamcha had become a welcome presence. There remained so much history between them and no longer any romantic interest that these late night games and movies required very little bother. Around Yamcha, she could just be.

The man on her left, however…

She scowled in his direction, smothering her irritation and standing to see Yamcha out.

"Don't stop coming around just because I won again tonight," she chided him, leading him down the dark hall towards the front door.

"Yeah, yeah, I hear you." His tone was teasing, pleasant. When they arrived at the door, they said their farewells, and she waved as he leapt into the air.

When she'd returned to the lounge, Trunks was, predictably, fussing. She couldn't even have one second to herself, could she? Vegeta had slouched even further into the chair.

Trunks was just beginning to sleep through the night, though with some complaints. She rocked the bassinet and watched his father from the corner of her eyes.

"You really did a number on yourself tonight," she mumbled, eyeing him sidelong.

"What do you care," he snapped.

She prickled with indignation. "I don't," she corrected him harshly. "Just letting you know you look like shit."

He blinked slowly, her nasty tone just sliding off his fatigued form.

He remembered a time, pressing her up against the kitchen counter in the dark, her soft pants against his skin, and an entreaty: "Stay with me tonight. For Kami's sake, just one night. Don't you care about us?" And his rebuff even as he thrust into her, "I don't."

Vegeta felt as if he were full of holes, and as he plunged, paralyzed, into the sea, all these holes filled with seawater and just caused him to sink faster.

Bulma watched him with both curiosity and concern, rifling through the cabinets in the kitchenette of the lounge. In the quiet, she dumped some frozen snacks onto a plate and popped them into the microwave.

After a moment, she returned, placing the snacks on the table and digging in without offering Vegeta any. She scooped the pile of cards and began stacking and cutting the deck, the shuffling cards snapping in the quiet.

"I don't want to play," he informed her.

"I wasn't going to ask you to," she snapped.

She knocked the cards against the table to smooth them out and then placed them to the side, snatching another snack from the plate before standing to leave.

He grabbed her hand, quick and agile, preventing her from scooping up Trunks and leaving.

And placed her hand to his face, exhaling into it with deep exhaustion.

Bulma's wide eyes regarded him with bewilderment.

Vegeta was seeking comfort from her.

* * *

 

It was a sound that still sometimes haunted her dreams.

Bulma padded down the hall until she drew up to the door, hand hovering over the doorknob.

With a surge of courage, she twisted it, and stepped inside.

Vegeta was trembling in the moonlight, soaked through with sweat and thrashing. His fists gripped the sheets, and a long, gutteral growl came from deep within his throat that caused her hair to stand on end and had her rethinking her original motivation.

Vegeta had been plagued by nightmares from the very moment he'd strode from Capsule 3, his anguished cries and his violent writhing had left her shaking in the next room. Sometimes he narrated them, the grisly details causing her stomach to churn and her heart to splinter. Gradually, as they began sharing a bed, the night terrors diminished, but since he'd snuck back into the compound after the Cell Games, the nightly torture had returned full-force. This wasn't the first night she'd been awoken by the familiar shouts, the sound of the lamp crashing onto the floor, the pleas for mercy. It was the first night she was going to do something about it, though.

From days long past, she knew that she had to use caution when trying to stir him. He had never deliberately hurt her during the damned nightmares, but if she wasn't careful, she could get smacked by a wayward hand, or headbutted by a solid Saiyan skull. The first and only time she hadn't been able to move out of the way quickly enough, he'd left a bruise blooming on her cheekbone, and he'd fretted over it the rest of the day, quietly paying the penance for it with apologetic gestures until she'd shooed him away in annoyance. He had loved her once, just not the most. She didn't imagine she'd get that kind of treatment anymore, so she thought it best to keep on guard.

She navigated the dark room and then rested her weight on the bed, held her hands out over him uncertainly as he shook, still deeply entrenched in the nightmare. Finally, she placed one hand on the clammy bare arm beside her. "Shhhh, Vegeta," she whispered. "Vegeta, wake up."

It was as if he hadn't heard her, and she chided herself for believing that she could just walk right in and smooth the whole thing over. She was, just, loathe to touch him after all this time, the body that had betrayed her; but in this circumstance in the right-here-right-now there was no other way. She had to go all in, or just suffer the sounds of his misery next door.

She got to her knees on his bed, the mattress giving with her weight, and placed both hands on his feverish shoulders, shaking him. "Vegeta!" She examined him with concern, his cringing, pallid face, strong brows pinching. "Vegeta!" His name was like an anchor she threw down into the dark, and she hoped that eventually he'd find it, climb up, and resurface. "Vegeta! Wake up! It's safe! Wake up!"

But to her growing distress, the plea caused him to become more panicked, and he snarled desperately, shaking his head frantically. "No. No! I won't!"

"Vegeta, it's Bulma," she tried to assure him clinically. "It's Bulma. You're dreaming. Come on. Wake up."

"You can't have me. Don't touch me!"

She couldn't help the stab of hurt but tamped it down. He was facing another enemy, and a woman who once wished to be loved didn't exist in that landscape.

"Vegeta," she continued calling, the sing song of hope. With only a moment's hesitation, she took his chin in her fingers firmly."Vegeta, wake up," she commanded. "Come back to the living."

He bucked, and it pitched her sideways. She caught herself on the edge of the bed, but suddenly a shadow was looming over her in the night. "I'll kill you," came a throaty warning, hungry for blood, and she stiffened with fear.

With her weight on her palms, she looked up slowly with dismay. His eyes were open, but unseeing. Black, but murky. Vacuous, but fanatical.

She bolted, crawling frantically out of bed, but he grabbed her ankle, pulling her back with ease.

"Vegeta!" She cried.

"I'll kill you," he snarled, half dangling her, and she kicked her legs out as hard as she could, trying to sever his hold. One of her heels made contact with his jaw, jarring him momentarily, and she dove onto the floor, rolling underneath the bed.

She shrieked as a figure dropped to its hands and knees just outside her haven, and his arm came darting forward. "C'mere, little monkey. I only want to play."

"No!" She sobbed, kicking at the hand with new terror, squirming as far away as she could from it.

To her relief, the figure straightened and disappeared, and her breath caught in her throat in relief. She had only the space of a few ragged breaths before it occurred to her that he could be anywhere when she was drug out by the back of her shirt from the other side of the bed, and she flailed, screaming.

"I'll kill you!" Vegeta bellowed in her face, his eyes glazed and the shadows against his face inky, and she flinched at his volume and sobbed.

"Vegeta, it's Bulma! Wake up, please, wake up," she begged with her hands clasped together.

"Why? Why?" This was a new voice; not the one of pure driven rage, but of betrayal, torment, and purgatory. "How could you have done this to me?" He asked someone, no one. "And I was just a boy."

Bulma choked, and brought her hands up to his face, cupping his cheeks. "Vegeta, honey. It's Bulma. Please. Please."

And as if her words had to travel a long way down, the seconds ticked by long as lifetimes, but the anchor finally hit ground this time, and Vegeta stilled under her hands.

His eyes widened right before his knees buckled.

The force of it caused them to crash to the floor in a tangle, but Bulma was just overfull with relief, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder. "Vegeta," she begged throatily, "please wake up."

"I—" He began, and she pulled back to look at his face, and it was him, blinking, staring outwards in shock.

She tightened her hold on him and rocked him. "I was so scared," she croaked, tears wet on his neck. "You couldn't hear me."

His arms wrapped around her of their own volition, and he stared at the wall in shock, mouth moving soundlessly. "I…I…"

"Shhhh," she hushed him, hold tightening.

He was breathing raggedly, sweat stinging his eyes. The hair at his neck felt damp with it, and he trembled despite himself. "I just," he said without control, his voice shaking. "I can't make him go away." His bare back slicked against the wall.

Bulma eased her hold on him and pulled back to look up at him with watery eyes, though the color had returned to her face. "You can't let him win, Vegeta," she whispered savagely.

"But he always wins—" he tried explaining.

"You can't," she urged. "You're stronger than him now."

"I am never strong enough," he admitted roughly, his palms coming to rest on his bare thighs, and he gazed into their emptiness.

She rested her forehead in the crook of his shoulder and sighed. The reality of the situation was returning to her, and she shifted her hips awkwardly, putting distance between them.

"Get into bed and I'll put the tv on. You're not fit to go back to sleep right now." She stood, striding across the room, even though Vegeta slouched against the wall, staring into the hands that held nothing, the hands of a man who was nothing. He dimly registered the sounds of her steps in his room, the brightness and the click of the lamp being flicked on.

As if underwater, he felt her hand on his forearm, pulling up, willing him off the floor. He sat on the bed obediently, and she stuffed some pillows behind him to bolster him. A glass of water hovered in his vision, and he took it dazedly. The tv blinked on.

He registered her weight dimly as she sat beside him, leaning against the headboard and flicking through the channels. It felt familiar, this old routine of hers as she tried to get his mind off of the visceral haunts of his mind at night. She settled on a channel, plied him with more water, and draped the blanket over his knees, before leaning back and turning to the late night movie in silence.

His breathing eventually evened, and though the face of his master was still superimposed on his lids when he closed his eyes, the intensity and realness were seeping away like blood down the train, until all that was real was the low light, the soft babbling of the movie, and the woman's solid presence beside him, watching the movie with red eyes but a firm jaw.

He wasn't a man anymore who knew anything with certainty. Where once his landscape was well-known, everything had been cast in the shadow of doubt. And yet he'd gone so low now that not even doubt troubled him. There remained no doubt now, no definitive surety or confidence or vanity, but just the inescapable knowledge that he was nothing, and that he deserved nothing. Just he, at his bottom most level, comprehending that there was no hope, just emptiness, and powerlessness, and darkness.

But just the knowing, the acknowledging, fortified him in a small way. Even if everything was taken from him, even if he could never achieve anything, even with his failures all splayed out in front of him, something had remained. Something was still left over to observe it all. And that something could only be himself. Raw.

The self that was left over straightened against the headboard with aching muscles, snaked his arm under the woman's surprised, petite form, and drew her close, exhaling as he slid his fingers through his disheveled hair with weariness. She was rigid in his grasp, and he wondered at that, wondered at how two people could inhabit the same person, the woman who came to save him tonight, crying over his suffering, and the woman who repelled his presence. And in response, in rebellion, he weaved the fingers of his hand into hers, feeling her heart hammer with lurid panic until she eventually relaxed stiffly into the crook of his arm, head resting on his shoulder as they watched the tv inattentively, sleepily, defying the night.

His hand was no longer empty.


	9. A Reimagining

Four printed dating profiles sat on her lap. Just four, whittled down painstakingly by Mrs. Briefs, spread out on Bulma's crossed legs. Four men that her mother desperately wanted her to see—and one of them to burden her with his pleasantries this very night.

"Bulma, honey, you aren't getting any younger here!"

Bulma had scoffed. She wasn't  _that_  old! And, hey, she'd already given them Trunks; what more did her mother want from her?

"So handsome!" Her mother had gushed, running her finger down their "About" sections in a caress. "And so caring! Look, this one 'loves to make his lady feel special with small gestures, like a surprise trip to a tropical island for a sunset dinner!'" Her mother pinned Bulma with doe eyes,  _very_  impressed. "Oh, a real keeper!"

"If he calls me 'my lady,' I think I'd have to wallop him one," Bulma muttered as she calibrated the baby monitor to an even wider range, screwdriver spinning between her fingers with annoyed energy.

Bulma, with four of the most eligible bachelors on her lap, mused on the fact that this was all very ironic. Not just in the I-already-had-romance-and-look-where-that-got-me way, but because, plainly, Bulma had always been a romantic. Photos ripped from magazines, all starry and hazy at the edges like someone had put vaseline around the lens of the camera. All bare and twitching pectorals, wind-swept hair, and epic passions. Dashing men, whose strong arms would embrace her protectively, whose dedication to her would be inscribed in sweeping script between leather-bound pages and maybe even sold outright as a movie script.…Yes, at one point she'd been afflicted with the teen disease, the all-absorbing lust for a profoundly charged romance.

Though perhaps not so, well… _innocently_. Bulma had been more curious about the  _physical_  mechanics of romance and the push-and-pull game of dominance in flirting, and less interested in flipping through wedding magazines all day. Tulle, cakes, flowers, quiet happy endings—that hadn't been Bulma's jive. No, she'd wanted action, and wow-factor, and fireworks, and desperate,  _lusty_ , inflamed confessions of  _need!_ She'd wanted a romance for the ages, from a real, hot-blooded man! She had cared less about finding someone ambitious or rich to take care of her—money and success were a currency no man could best her in—and more about finding someone fascinating and gallant with a dash of dark and troubled thrown in like an ala cart side of sour cream. Yamcha had been her desert bandit once, but he'd taken the opportunity for redemption and had settled down. And what they had had was a low burn, with no fireworks or fire or confessions of desire in the pouring rain. And so Bulma'd grown bored and resentful, and Yamcha had grown fairweather.

Bulma had only spent a good chunk of her life pining for searing gazes, yearning for grand gestures, and lusting for physical devotions of white, hot love. And in hindsight, it probably explained why she'd sprang so swiftly from Yamcha to Vegeta. There was no denying Vegeta's grand gestures (300 G's before he'd even had time to acclimate to 50) and devotion (to himself).

And albeit, they were of a different variety...his fingers toying under the hem of her dress as she bent to fix the GR; or how about hoisting her against the hallway wall, sinking to his knees, and burying his face between her legs as her Z Warrior friends were to arrive any moment for her party? Even, she was embarrassed to admit, one time in an empty Capsule Corp boardroom, with her dress hiked over her hips and her panties between her teeth. It was everything that she'd always wanted with all her being and that she'd never known she'd wanted. Needed.

Vegeta had been a man of action, and fire, and dedication, that much was undeniable, and what wasn't grand about that?

She stared down at the profiles of the four men with her lip curled. They were all handsome enough, she supposed, and successful in their respective fields. But they didn't make her blood boil, they didn't make her heart stop. But should they? Maybe she'd never stopped being a romantic, but her tastes had just changed and her expectations had gotten more realistic?

The fridge opened and she startled, head snapping up to find Vegeta scanning its contents. She tried to appear busy, and as usual, he returned the favor. He was wearing sweat pants and a hoodie, but she could make out the curve of his hard calves and round shoulders stubbornly underneath. Athletic fashion's paragon model. The casual Earthling clothes still made her snicker, just because they seemed so…misplaced…on a man so typically condescending. She couldn't get used to how  _laid back_  he appeared to be the last few months, though she preferred this new look exponentially to his training suit and gloves, which just reminded her how far a rung she was on the ladder of his prerogatives. The corner of her mouth quirked down. And yet, mixed in with her resentment for his battle suit was a jolt of pride for the man who worked so hard to deserve to wear it.

She tamped down the sentiment firmly.

There was something about him as he plucked things from the fridge that seemed slower, wanner than usual. Her brows knit. Though she was loath to admit it, his odd, worrisome behavior was starting to unravel the anger at him that she ( _he_ , she corrected) had so meticulously built.

He wasn't the same man who'd offered up all that searing, electric devotion in the years before the Androids, that was for sure, but he also wasn't that arrogant, overbearing, pigheaded Prince that'd just stepped off Capsule 3, or his even more nauseating twin who'd graced them all with his presence during the android conflict. She'd still have liked to sock him one for showing his face so nonchalantly after she'd gone and barfed up her guts for nine months before bearing him a son without so much as a thank-you-ma'am, but dispatching the androids spectacularly and effortlessly had been the goal from the beginning, right? It wasn't like she should have expected him to go and marry her or anything.

Except he couldn't beat the androids, and he couldn't beat Cell, and he couldn't even beat Cell after his ceaseless training in the Hyperbolic Whatsit. And so now what? Bulma was surprised he hadn't just gone back up to Kami's Lookout once the smoke had cleared and asked to crash  _there_. He'd bailed on her in the most despicable way, in her esteemed and righteous opinion, and had left her with some cruel, harrowing feelings of self-doubt that she could  _never_  overlook, and for what? To impress everyone with some fancy moves and dramatic flair? He could go train with Hercule, the empty, pompous schmuck. So count Bulma out of sympathizing with poor, sad Vegeta.

But something tugged at her anger like a child trying to get its parent's attention. It was something like an acknowledgment that this Vegeta was of a different stock: quiet, but not haughtily reserved; unintrusive when he was once pushy; and, moreover, lacking the conceit that gave his every royal #2 importance.

One way that this Vegeta  _was_  a mirror image of his former self, however, was that he had been pushing himself to falling apart, coming in from the GR each night nearly in pieces—but for no good reason at all. The androids were no longer a threat, and Goku was no longer alive. She had refused to patch Vegeta back up, the idiot, and reward him for his masochistic behavior. She'd tried that already, but evidently helping a Saiyan demonstrated that you were their doormat.

But she was beginning to rethink that strategy, and in fact, her  _whole_  strategy for dealing with his continued presence. Her rules had been set up to protect her from the Vegeta who'd bailed on her; but the Vegeta-who-bailed-on-her was coming apart at the seams.

She narrowed her eyes, watching him carefully from the corner of her eyes. That didn't mean this Vegeta was deserving of her trust. This was the same man who'd left her, after all; what was to prevent him from leaving Trunks? She looked back down at the four profiles on her lap.

These men were boring—at best, fishing for a wife, which wasn't at  _all_  in her purview; or, at worst, looking for a night between the sheets, and only one man could keep up with her there. Though Kami could pry that information out of her cold. dead. hands _._  Vegeta had practically ruined her for other men, and there had been plenty of nights that she'd  _never_ speak of—NEVER!  _EVER!_ —that involved a bottle of wine, a book of erotica, and a reimagining of some of her most sordid escapades with Vegeta.

Nonetheless, the four assholes splayed in her lap were probably predicable, and that was like a solid chunk of gold perched atop a whole heap of fool's gold. Maybe one would fall for her, bland as he was, and she'd finally get a man that was devoted to her and not his own damned reflection. That was something, wasn't it? She rested her cheekbone on her knuckles and contemplated it. What would her life look like with another man in it? Crowded, she thought immediately, and snorted.

She looked up as Vegeta placed his plate in the sink. He'd inhaled his sandwiches as she'd been lost in thought.

She watched him contemplatively, gaze softening unconsciously. "What are you up to today?"

His eyes flicked over to her as he gulped his water, and he put the glass back down on the counter without turning toward her. "Training," he replied automatically, even though she'd knew that'd be his answer, was ever his answer.

"What is it you're training for?" She stood, tossing the profiles onto the table, and crossed her arms over her chest, ambling forward. "Now that Son Goku and the androids are gone," she explained, tone carefully polite.

He continued to gaze down into the sink. "A warrior never knows what looms around the corner, only that something does, and so he must prepare." It sounded awfully scripted, but there was an edge in it, too, that she didn't like.

"Well, get prepared, soldier," she commented dryly, turning away to leave. "I have a hot date tonight, and you're watching Trunks."


	10. Gratitude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, present tense indicates a scene from the past. I know, it gets dicey.

Two Standard decades of his life had been speckled black space stretching out with nauseating infinity.

The last few years have been clashingly different, but indistinguishable all the same. The same confining, rounded structure of the GR, his pod. The same regimented, single-minded schedule. The same violent goals. The same deeply resented, deeply seated inferiority.

Except, where once he was Frieza's weapon, honed and whet with every purge, he was now his own blade, to seek and destroy on his terms. And yet Vegeta has never felt less in control.

Erupting from Namekian soil and spitting doom, and overcome with the hunger of the walking dead for life, he'd been full of the fury of the born again. It hadn't lasted; at least, not that pure thing it had been before he'd been winked back to Earth. He'd been discarded by both Frieza and Kakarot, forgotten, left to steep in his humiliation on a backwater planet. His mutated hatred for himself found its host in the last Saiyan left to him. It bit into this new prey with its ape's teeth, aroused further by the struggle like those drug-addled bastards who'd jumped him on Ily'e 7 before it was colonized as Frieza 1699. There was a silver lining here, he'd choked, weeks into his vacation on Earth. And with new self-volition, he swore he'd make the universe itself weep for leaving him out of history.

Yesterday, blue curls glanced out the rounded windows of Capsule 3. His stomach had clenched with anxiety, but his eyes had followed, glued.

Today he discussed programming code with The Woman. She has the arrogance and optimism from having always been free. She walks with a purposeful stride, her curls bouncing spiritedly. Her brows pinch together when she's frustrated with her work, with him. Her nails are smoothly rounded, the crescents pale ivory. Her lips are full and pouty when she first wakes up, blinking over her second coffee. Inside he has a full inventory of details on her. He's become a collector. A part of him that's tangy as metal and cold as empty space indexes it under "Self-Protection." But he's becoming something Other than that machine, that tool, that fouled definition of "Saiyan" that he rebelled against with every breath. He's becoming More, and Different. The part of him that's new and alien is unafraid to admit that it's cataloging these details because it simply  _likes_  to.

But still, under Vegeta's skin, the same sickness guides him; it isn't the fury of living, but of dying, of mimicry, of existing in a body with a soul that's already dead, that only makes its presence known with the rebellious gestures of the caged.

Except for when blue curls slide across pale, round shoulders and rasp against paper as her pencil sketches out radical ideas in her notebook. He likes to listen to her work, seated in the spare chair in her office. Sometimes the woman's father glides in, puffing on a pipe, and the tobacco smoke makes him sneeze. Sometimes, his conviction knots and something he's beginning to understand are his own feelings about the events that make up his life, these things gnaw at him all day and night. He pushes himself too hard in the gravity chamber to exorcise it, but he always turns back around and lopes to her, planting himself in the office chair to watch her wrap his swollen fists in bandage tape as she tsk's at him. He looks at her long eyelashes bat against her pale cheeks as she surveys his knuckles and says nothing.

The vacuum of space is nestled inside him, the only lover or friend he's ever known. Over and over he relives the press of his forehead against the window of the pod as he watched it watch him. He was like a toy in a snow globe. Frieza shook him up, made him put it to rights again. Vegeta'd always known what to do, didn't even disagree with it. Back then, he'd never questioned his role, his position in the game, his being-in-the-world, a world that was not his own, a world where no one but Frieza owned anything. They hadn't even owned their own destinies or bodies, whose daily use required bartering their labor with the blood of others. Not until a few years ago, at least, before the mess on Namek, did he question his purpose and begin stewing with something he would later identify as rage, and remorse.

Just a few short years ago, violence had been the rule of thumb, so often applied that it had become a fiction, a poor imitator of something that was supposed to be wild and passionate. Violence was language; he'd only been sentient when violence used him to communicate itself. The last two decades had been a life of savagely curbed existence, with sin at the root of it all. Except on his side of the universe, "sin" was so far removed from a concept of "good" and "evil" that it just  _was_. Sin was living. In Frieza's domain, sin was the currency of trade.

Here on this planet, though, there are liminal periods, blips in space, where suddenly he has the opportunity to choose, but there's more than one answer. Sapphire eyes gaze up at him from a mess of curls, asking for his opinion of a prototype. Sometimes he shuts the door, settles back into his round, confining space, where it's familiar, and hollow, and breathless, and void, where he acts out the routine, mimicks the military object that was once Frieza's, mimes the empty gesture of control that he places severely on his own body now that no one else has a right to it. Pain was more than just punishment, it was self-realization, and clarity, and submission to a power that was right  _and_  wrong. It's frankly the only language he knows to use to talk to himself.

But sometimes he watches her hands as they adeptly empty a training bot, and she asks him firmly for a screwdriver, hunched over the metal belly with complete disregard that her back to him has left her defenseless to a widely known predator, and he has a choice. The choice to succumb to the emptiness, or the chance to breathe in the wild wide open.

And he hands her the screwdriver.

* * *

It's with some obvious guilt that Bulma sits the recently deceased computer on her work desk and turns to the Saiyan leaning against the wall.

"Can't do it," she admits heavily. "Computer's on the fritz."

Even so, her mouth slants as he, predictably, returns her news with a scowl.

"I need it done now."

"I know that," she says through her teeth, before she carefully exhales. Her shoulders slump. "Look, it will get done. Just...later."

She watches him turn towards the window, his strong jaw gritting, his crossed arms bunching with an unspoken effort. A curious pang of regret that she can't help courses through her.

Bulma knows that his broody funk has something to do with his frantic need to perform the ritual of beating the shit out of himself for upwards of twelve hours a day. Without that ritual, he's lost. She worries her lip, worries about his penchant for hurting himself, resents it.

And that's why she finds herself neck deep in tomorrow's 5 am, with mounting evidence that it is indeed possible to survive off fumes and day old coffee. But it was worth it. Oh, Kami, was it worth it.

"How much longer?" Rumbles a voice from behind her, and she turns in surprise, looking at the fixture in the shadows of her lab.

"It's done." She swivels in her chair, meeting his eyes with a look of uncertainty.

She watches his shoulders shake, watches him run his palm over his face with bald exhaustion.

She watches him, and for the first time, sees this house guest, with the chip on his shoulder and rough edges, as just a man. For the first time, he could be human, and his skin glows amber in the light of her office lamp, the shadow of day old scruff on his cheeks, and she wonders briefly what it would feel like to skim her hands over his tired face in comfort.

"Thank you," he finally admits, voice dragging over relief.

"It was my pleasure," she concedes, humbled.

* * *

He reminded her of this guy she used to date during one of the many falling-outs she had had with Yamcha. He had been sweet enough, and he seemed like a fun guy, but in an underdeveloped way, like a pancake you excitedly cut into that's still doughy in the center. Later, she discovered that it's because he was already in a relationship—in this case, a bromance. He had one of those needy, immature best friends that was absolutely hair-pullingly annoying, the kind that dropped "dude" as if it were god's gift to pepper language, the kind that was always getting his friend into trouble because he thought it was funny. And even though it was very clear to Bulma that it was just really juvenile, her boyfriend was in a bad bromance with a dumbass. And at the end of the week, Bulma had come to the conclusion that, fair or not, it also made her boyfriend a dumbass.

Once she'd dropped the breakup bomb on him, leaving him with his mouth moving as if only hot air existed up there and his mouth was its exhaust port, Bulma swore off men who had something more important in their lives than romancing her. But it was half-hearted, because later she got back with Yamcha, who she was pretty sure was in love with a version of her rather than the reality, but she missed his predictability. And then the obvious final falling, with Vegeta.

Anyway, her date reminded her of this brief boyfriend she used to have that she hadn't thought of in years, but in this case, she wasn't fighting another boy for his attention. Instead, she's fighting the idiot for his own attention.

Bulma sipped her martini and listened with poor enthusiasm. Yamcha could have told the guy her stiff, blank expression meant WARNING, WARNING: the flat line of her lips; her strained gaze over the cloth napkins, the little candle, and the salad bowls between them; the quick, cutting body language. Yamcha had always had a knack for reading her moods. Unfortunately, he'd never had a talent for overcoming them.

The man was going on and on about his most recent paper for a psychology journal. It wasn't a field she had much experience with—unless personal experience with megalomaniacs counted. She ticked off the most recent offenders: Cell, both androids, although Eighteen was loosening up, Frieza, daddy Piccolo, Pilaf...Vegeta. The behavioral sciences are a bit fleshier, a bit more controversial than her own hard sciences, and if she cared what this guy thought of her, her ego'd be a little dampened by her lack of knowledge in this field.

But she didn't. It was becoming crystal clear that this date, a favor for her mother and a boon to her recently debased self-esteem, was a mistake. But it wouldn't even matter if she was at all interested in the guy, anyway: the guy was still going on and on as if she were hanging on to his every word. She wondered if his effusive blindness to her misery was because he's, mystifyingly, used to women's attention. Her eyes flicked over his suit. Nah: the charcoal gray suit is about a decade past its prime, his slicked back hair several seasons behind schedule. This was a man who hadn't had many encounters with women, but at least he's talking, which is more than she could ask for from Vegeta.

His work was in mental health; she'd picked up that much. He was talking about one of them now, as if eagerly selecting a fancy wine at a wine-tasting in order to wax on about its merits and earn a few googly eyes and pats on the back. The man may as well be wearing cashmere and an ascot, because he was holding up this particular disorder like surveying the viscosity of wine in the sunlight, with a smug, slanted smile that she was certain she's seen before on Cell's face.

"And it's nearly untreatable."

Bulma was applying a refresher layer of lipstick. She didn't intend on sticking around for the dinner course. "What's that again?"

"Narcissistic personality disorder. It's almost untreatable. Very elusive, even in my hands." He folded his hands together on the table and peered into their depths as if admiring a precious gem. Bulma glanced at them, just to make sure there was nothing there. "These people behave and  _intensely_  believe that they are the most important person in the world. And then their loved ones have absolutely no recourse: they can't point out the apparent problems this creates in their relationships, because this person is incapable of understanding that they're not the center of the universe. In their minds, they're incapable of doing any wrong."

Bulma snorts. "I know someone like that," she mutters, closing her purse with a snap.

He was really on a roll now, and Bulma immediately regretted encouraging him. "Many of my clients act as if they are the most important person in the world. They over-exaggerate their abilities, have unrealistic confidence in themselves, and are extremely selfish. They completely overestimate their talents and skills, lack empathy for others, and just cannot recognize the needs and feelings of others. It's tragic. Real tragic stuff. I wrote all about it in my master's thesis."

Bulma nearly choked, meeting his eyes for the first time since they'd brought out the bottle of wine. "Is that so?" She drained her glass of wine, but it's contents weren't doing anything to remove her from this situation.

He was really on a roll, becoming the textbook he was always meant to be, she figured. "Like Greek Narcissus, they long to stare at their image in the reflecting pool, but the pool must be completely still or it will distort their image. Not until they admit they have a problem can they be treated, not until after they've lost everything. Not until they have no one willing to wait for them on the other side any longer, when they've been stripped of all their illusions, can they acknowledge their own insignificance and their true feelings."

Bulma paled.

_Not until they've been stripped of all their illusions can they acknowledge their true feelings._

"And who wants to stick around for someone like that? Anyway. Enough about me. Let me ask you: have you ever been to a private island?"

The restaurant door shut smoothly behind her. The delicate breeze ruffled her hair, the tips of it brushing her cheeks in a caress. Her pace was slow, thoughtful, as she walked the pier alone, the groups of friends and couples dressed for a Saturday night gliding past her like a stream around stone. She gazed out over the lake, the lights of the pier and the boats flickering on the choppy wake, and hugged her purse to her chest.

When the front door opened with a soft click, the living room was dark. Bulma's heels clipped the hardwood, echoing, as she made her way to Trunks' room. The crib was empty; a dull anxiety jabbed her, but she just made her way to her sitting room, as if pulled in by a fishing line.

She could see his hair superimposed over the tv screen, the movie quiet as white noise. She could see the other one's back, rising and falling, as she approached them from behind, in his blue onesie, on his belly on the couch. His fine, lavender hair, silky and shiny, freshly washed; his chubby cheeks and lips, wet and pursed with sleep. She ran her fingers delicately over his head, smiling at the way his breath hitched and then continued undisturbed, deep in dreams.

And then she turned toward the other one with a sad smile, her silhouette a cut out in front of the tv. He watched her, sunken into the couch, eyes black and gleaming in the dark. She fell into the couch next to him, ignoring him stiffening beside her, put her hands on her thighs, the hem of her dress under her palms.

And then curled her arms around his neck, burying her face into the familiar crook of his neck and inhaling. Her eyes watered.

"Just let me hold you," she assured him, sensing his growing panic. "I just need to hold you...and be held by you, for just a minute. For just a minute."

After a long moment, she felt him relax fractionally, felt the rise and fall of his chest, inches from hers. The inside of her elbows, on his broad shoulders. Her forehead against the edge of his shirt, the soft, warm skin of his collar. Squeezing her eyes shut against the world outside of this embrace, even if just for a moment. An act of rebellion against the world around them, a self-indulgence, a middle finger to his past, their past, the past year, to her date. A rebellion and an homage to every snarl of his lips at her easy affection over the years, to the snarl of the yarn that had knit them together, and then left them tangled.

His breath came out in a defeated sigh, and she fisted the back of his shirt, rested her cheek on his smooth cheek.

"Thank you," she breathed, husky with unspoken emotion.

"You're welcome," he finally answered, understanding, his dark voice throaty in the shadows.


	11. Make Me

It's true that her opinion of him originates from two different women: the woman she was before, and the woman she is after. Or, like a date marking the turn of history in a text book: B.L and A.L.

Before Left and After Left.

The Bulma from the age of Before-Left, hair corkscrewed and fragrant as wild chrysanthemums, with a pure and starry gaze. What did her father call that blue, the clear, watery blue of her eyes? Aquamarine? Or the bolder azure? As pure as the mirrored reflection of the sky in the bowl of the ocean, the wind holding its breath at the spectacle.

She resents that Bulma.

That Bulma, Before-Left Bulma, she had guts, while After-Left-Bulma's insides are hollowed out. That Bulma was capricious as the sea, cloudy seagreen to furious bluebell in turns, and the shore endured her without complaint. That Bulma was beautiful without even trying. Charmed, entitled, thankless. That Bulma was impulsive, the wind her chariot, and wanted, wanted, wanted, and had yet to pay for anything.

And then, a Moon—

and a curtain of moody clouds drew back,

and the Moon turned its dark face in its orbit to her virgin seas,

and mesmerized, she bid the wind, "To Him,"

and was never innocent again.

But Before-Left-Bulma, for all her faults, at least felt her love sharp as thorns in her clutching hand, and true as the weight of his hand in her own as she wrapped it on the exam table. Despite all the flames she had carried in her teenage years, despite even her long haul with Yamcha, this was the overwhelming force of nature that was desperate, first love. For the first time in her life, Bulma felt deep as a woman who saw her future in the face of a man.

After-Left-Bulma envied Before-Left-Bulma her passion. That she felt an emotion other than just bitterness. But not her ignorance. Not her naivete.

But wasn't every woman guilty of falling hard, just once? Before-Left-Bulma, with a heart not yet humbled but cardinal red and pumping proudly—Before-Left-Bulma had been exhausted, wouldn't you know, at fiddling with the bow and arrow, of tempting fickle and lesser hearts to pounding, of the sound of her arrow sinking into soft flesh but her hand already at her quiver, searching again. That Bulma had yearned for a creature apart from the game. More. Above.

With slender fingers pale as moonlight, that Bulma inscribed her wishes into the wind and tucked her longings into the folds of her being.

And when she expected it least, there He was—a penumbra lighting his antlered helm as he slid through the silhouettes of trees, silky and predatory like some not-of-this-world pagan god.

She was the one who chased and hunted now, after the shadowed man whose touch could inflame that starved, subterranean pit of her who wanted, just _wanted_ , and arched towards his looming fingers to urge his caress. He, the Aries to her Athena, causing her dogs to howl at the moon and milky white flowers to bloom with both joy and protest under his booted heel.

She should have known.

All the texts in the world warned her; all those songs, unheeded.

Her aching body under his roughened palms, begging, as the oldest story fingered the keys of her body.

And, sure, the ice in his black gaze thawed, revealing something searching, curious, amused. There's no lack for women who think they can change a man, right? But the gaze was still tortured, even more dangerous in its nakedness. And whether from instinct, or habit of circumstance, his jaw closed around her neck. She was sucking in her breath at its icy clamp even as she trembled in the need to meld every part of her to every part of him—even as he tore up and discarded every piece she handed him, as thorough in love as he was in gifting death.

And as her god of war closed his fist around her and crushed her, crumpled as the once-tender petals of a flower, she'd sagged, castaway from his palm into the sea and then washed ashore, a new incarnation. She was a Persephone, the enslaved queen of dead winter, cleaved from the spring maiden she had been before the god of the underworld had dragged her down, crowned her in the bones of his past, and left her to till and tend a barren world as he chased ghosts of memory.

Before-Bulma, After-Bulma.

But Bulma, today, running a brush through her straight, no-nonsense haircut, pulling a plain t-shirt over her soft belly, flipping through the day's task list with fine, pinched brows and a hard gaze in the empty silence of a pale white morning, a morning spent fielding memories as velvety as the waxy leaf of spring's heady magnolias and as suffocating as their scent.

Bulma, today, wasn't any longer _just_ After-Left-Bulma.

That woman, too, was bubbling and reforming, rippling and churning in her cupped palms before she would slide right through the spaces in her fingers. And though she would never again be birthed in seafoam and opalescent pearl where the land married the sea, a perfectly molded, modern day Venus who wanted to be touched but could never be hurt by that touch... Still, she changed.

And her sullen god of war and death was, once again, its reason.

* * *

Bulma blew her bangs from her eyes and slouched further into the kitchen chair.

It wasn't necessarily that she thought the schmuck was _right_. It's not that anyone could assign a label to the alien prince who had crashed her party, or that she'd even allow the puffed up, tweed jacket wearing wannabe Don Juan from last night to judge said alien. Vegeta was much more complicated than some umbrella diagnosis, but still, that he _might_ be, and that he _might_ be enduring it alone—and then her surprising, visceral reaction to it—It had penetrated the fog of her anger.

She looked down, mystified, at the hands last night that had reached for him with a life of their own. She had urgently needed to know that he was still all there. Her hands would know it better than her head. And briefly, he had been in her embrace, solid and real, even if he sat with his arms against his sides, enduring it with polite formality.

Last night, Vegeta had suddenly become a man, capable of feeling.

Her Narcissus, her Sisyphus, who had gazed on from high and fallen low. But he was drifting, while she remained linear, constant, because getting up in the morning to go through the motions at work and pretending to be emotionally unaffected was self-preservation, at least.

Even if they had had nothing left between them, they now had something wholly new and only theirs again. It was a black and white film, its silent lead more phantom than soldier, recently returned from war, haunting the halls aimlessly as a curious resident turned clues in her hands and pondered. He was a man rebuilt carelessly from fragments of other people's tragedies, falling apart at the seams because Dr. Frankenstein had split. It was as if Bulma was the only one who could still see him, see him stall while everyone lived out their lives around him. Only she was audience to his quiet surrender.

It wasn't the man who she'd miserably had dinner with last night that was on her mind.

But Bunny wailed anyway.

"But he offered to take you to a tropical island, didn't he?"

"Why would I even be interested in that," Bulma groused. "Frankly," she complained under her breath, "I could make better use out of a reliable babysitter and a good night's sleep."

"Goodness gracious," her mother scolded, in a tone she rarely used on her daughter. "You have some high expectations. Just what exactly are you waiting for?"

There was a scuffle from across the room, and seeking its source inside the ambient light of the fridge's light, Bulma and Vegeta's eyes met.

* * *

Vegeta does not believe in heroes.

Not the way they're imagined in Earthling films, not the thing Kakarot embodies to the other humans: a savior, pure and undiluted. No, Vegeta believes there are no heroes. Identifies, rather, with the villains. And though she might have laughed, said, "why doesn't that surprise me," eyes alight with mirth and affection, Vegeta can't return her humor.

Heroes are an Earthling franchise, reduced to the formula:

past injustice + preternatural athleticism + altruistic nature = moral authority

copy pasted copy pasted copy pasted.

But Vegeta knows that most men don't want to be heroes, no matter what they get to show for it. Not the physiques, the women, the screen time and adulation.

Men, Vegeta knows, would rather take, than give.

Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Caesar. They're complicated and dirty, the way men really are. They're ruthless in a way that men wish they could be. They get the job done. They're never meek. Men harbor that quote, "Men's greatest joy is in crushing their enemies," and clutch it to their secret heart. They play competitive sports and follow the stock market to imitate the act. Then their loins ache because they can't fulfill it.

Vegeta thinks of the Romans and the Greeks, struggling for breath in those dusty tomes in the Capsule Corp library where he found himself lately interloping. Of how the Romans introduced a new god to their stolen pantheon: Janus, or Justice. The Romans realized that Justice could sedate the people. No longer could the people seek justice for themselves, but had to rely on the state to give it to them. Later, early capitalists coerced workers to give up the means to production so that they could exploit and commodify their labor. His twenty years in the barren womb of the Cold Empire is reflected back at him in the woman's forgotten books, the smell of aged paper tickling his nose.

Saiyans knew the truth, and even if he knows it's biased, Vegeta still believes it. Saiyans understood that the source of reward and punishment lived inside, not outside, of their bodies. That agency was power, and their marriage was the reward itself. That was what Saiyans referenced when they spoke of pride. Frieza had despoiled their agency, so he had stolen their means to pride. Frieza had eradicated personal gain within his ranks, and so had created a schism within the Saiyan's own spirit. He had made them mercenaries, when they were warriors. He had severed the Saiyans means of producing their very souls.

Saiyans had understood that nothing was done without personal gain. Saiyans knew that a man fights for something he cares for, but fights even better for something he thinks he deserves, and that inside them a whole universe was theirs for the taking.

_Her_ ancestors, Vegeta thinks, were not sons of Achilles like his own, but of the Tuffles, of the Romans, of the Colds, gifting the earth not just civil engineering or organized warfare but devious, abstract, cool complexity.

Saiyans had understood justice wasn't a concept but simply the modicum for survival that was contained in a man's two fists, the very tools Saiyans used to create themselves, their pride. And it's this that Vegeta loathes most about Kakarot. Even in death he profits from the hero fantasy, when Vegeta knows what drove him was bloody and hungry, the very same thing that rode, and condemned, Vegeta.

With his forearms resting on his knees and his back against a bookcase, Vegeta feels a reanimated, acute hatred. Not for Kakarot, not for the woman—who, like a stray pin in a suit that jabs and irritates but can't be found, urging him to relax his grip on revenge, to give up his own means of self-production, his own two hands—not hatred for them, but for Frieza. For the sabotage and subversion of an identity that is now so twisted and tangled he can never make sense of it.

He flies listlessly toward the house, the camber of the sun painting the world in dawn's pallor and white washing the compound.

It's not that I hate you, Vegeta wants to say to her now that Kakarot's gone, her back turned to him not in the trust that once was but cold dislike as she makes her morning cereal. It's not that I wished to suppress or reject that thing that makes you _you_. He cannot say it, but still she begs to hear it. She doesn't understand that words expose him.

He had wondered how she escaped destruction. How did she shield what she loves, how did she keep even a tiny piece of herself? Was it simply chance, like a single building left standing among mortared rubble or a house serendipitously skipped in a tornado's path? How had she remained so whole?

He'd wanted to protect it. He'd wanted to own it for himself.

Instead, he'd destroyed it.

He is highly competent.

Sometimes _they're_ here, at her home, and Vegeta, who orbits her flight path throughout the compound and who listens silently to her speak, he stays his distance, glaring in resentment when they steal her from him. Vegeta mocks them silently, because acknowledging or speaking to them would make him feel dirtied.

They're reminiscing about Kakarot, making corporeal their virtuous defender fantasy.

Did you know, he thinks at them from against the doorway where he leans, that "work" is derived from the Earthling Middle English werk, from the Anglo-Saxon werc, from the Indo-European werg and from the Greek ergon, and all of it means work in the way that you use it today, except in Greek it refers to what men did in battle.

Did you know, Vegeta continues as they laugh in their grief for their loveable, late Saiyan, that the word "charm" was taken from the Greek "charma," which meant "source of joy," and is best translated today as "combat"?

Or "cock," that vulgar, colloquial description of his organ, "cock" has been used to denote "male" on Earth for the last thousand years, but it once meant "arouses another from slumber," and "a minister of religion," once meant "leader, chief man, ruling spirit, victor," once meant "one who fights with pluck and spirit"?

That it also meant "war"?

That, in order to avoid blasphemy, it was once a substitute for "God"?

Vegeta dismisses their hero worship with a throaty snort before leaving them there, because he knows why Earthlings think that the Spartans were righteous and cool and then condemn the selfishness and aggressiveness of Saiyans in the same breath. Vegeta is part of a hierarchy that has no meaning on Earth. Order here is reversed.

There are no heroes. There is no such thing as goodness or a selfless gift. Right and wrong and a moral Cartestian coordinate plane are figments of these Earthling's imagination, and what exists are simply actions that lead to unique consequences, without any 'good' or 'bad' accouterments. In the womb of space, the blankly staring, cold reality, men fight, not for justice, but to live. Villains, businessmen, Saiyans, soldiers, those who live by their nature rather than turning it inside out, they see reality for what it is. It's sadistic. But like a river, its aggression can be diverted. They shape it to survive. They do it for themselves. Taking is survival. Survival is winning. Living feels rewarding. And common men, even if just in the throbbing core of their beings, they still recognize that primal logic.

But whether in the dark heart of space, or in bed, the sleeping woman once curled into his side, when Vegeta has to do this or that dutifully whether to fulfill orders or a prophecy, and he shoulders the weight, without question, without looking back, because a Saiyan Prince pays for things, he fights and exchanges his life to create himself, and his pride—

so when he enters a dark tunnel, and it costs him himself—

if should there be a break of light, a slant of sun through grave dirt—

because you are not the same, because to those who have never been inside, the tunnel can't be described, it's a way of being, and no one can, wants, to talk about it—

but suddenly

a breath of fresh air once in awhile

and a glimpse of blue

seems like something

you deserve.

* * *

Bulma made a face. "No way!"

"Don't say I didn't warn you!"

The screen door smacked the door frame with a pop as Chi Chi followed Bulma outside.

"I'm not ready for that," Bulma admitted sullenly. "He's not even one yet. What am I going to do when he starts talking back?"

Chi Chi wiped her hands on the apron at her waist, small, bony, pale, but exceptionally strong. "He'll need a firm hand."

The women shared an uncomfortable but companionable silence. Their realities palpable before them. They were both women doing what they could, doing it by themselves.

"Stay strong," Bulma called out before the jet engines began to turn over.

"You too," ChiChi mouthed over the noise, waving before placing her fist on her hip. She would go back inside a house that was missing one person. Indefinitely.

Bulma had to keep telling herself that it wasn't so bad being alone.

As the jet ascended smoothly over the mountains, Bulma watched the sun set. She wondered briefly if Vegeta might appreciate the view on his own flight home from whereever he'd been spending his evenings lately, in all its sprawling peaches and dusky lavenders. She jerked in surprise, immediately clamping down with self-loathing. She had to keep reminding herself that she wasn't supposed to think about him, no matter his bizarre behavior. Why bother wondering if he'd enjoy a sunset? Vegeta didn't appreciate anything that didn't advance him. That's why she'd opted out of the daily repairs on the GR, even if it burdened her father. She wouldn't be used any longer.

She exhaled deeply in the empty cabin.

She hated him so passionately, and she never wanted to stop.

It was all she had left of him.

* * *

He flies in the rain.

He does this most nights, ducking in through the window around 3. At first the nights are cold and sharp with the wet winds of spring, and sometimes he's soaked to the bone, though he doesn't seem to notice. His grip is tight on the windowsill as he slides inside, and he paces the room with an agitated gait as he strips.

As the weeks pass and the days grow longer and golden and languorous, he grows calmer too, and on his face a look of brooding, hard-won peace takes root. But still he continues to wander after midnight. Silent, alone, sharp as broken glass that you instinctively reach for and pick up but cuts you.

* * *

If she could accuse him once of being a vampire holding her in thrall and bleeding her dry, then what now would the nature of their relationship be?

Was she now one of the walking dead? If she was dead inside, how could he hurt her? They might, if anything, find companions in the other again, dumbly stumbling together, dirty projections of who they once were.

Coming home in a foul mood from a failed blind date was sunny compared to this new, thick fear. It was ripping nails while clawing at a crumbling edge. It was the belly flop when the floor dropped out from under. If he wasn't simply the object of her acidic resentment, than he became More. He'd be flesh. He'd be three-dimensional. He became a person. His actions would be complex, and only human in their selfishness. It was now that she realized how much of the identity she had forged when he left hinged on his alienness and on the impassioned conviction that he had no heart. It was the encroaching terror that one day the thick curtains erected in her memory would peel back, and she would like and respect the man that they revealed, and then she'd be subject to that free fall all over again. She was already neck deep in restrained emotion; to accept what was forcing its way into her field of vision would be to swallow water. Bulma had worked hard to shut herself up tight after he left. She couldn't afford to fall to pieces again just because he had returned. Mostly she couldn't bear the thought of Vegeta rejecting her again. She could not be vulnerable again. She could not afford him becoming human.

* * *

He's not interested in Shakespeare's Othello, but Iago, Iago who isn't simply part of the plot but _makes_ the story. The workings of Iago's own mind rewrites history.

Vegeta is as raw as Cassio, who declared, _"Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial."_

He is reminded of watching the snowfall from her window, the flakes in their synchrony, her hand in his.

Or, as Iago said of Desdemona,

" _She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,_

_And I loved her that she did pity them._

_This only is the witchcraft I have used."_

* * *

He arrived at the compound late in the furnace-like heat of a July morning. He stood his boots neatly by the bureau, tossed his shirt with weary effort into the hamper, before falling into the crisp white sheets. Vegeta stretched out both his arms and crossed his naked feet. His eyelids closed heavily, and in the morning light, the iron set of his jaw and the heavy weight of the back of his hand against his brow made him appear older, bone-weary.

Vegeta's mouth softened gradually, but the hard yellow sunlight confronted him through the window, making the room stifling and starkly bright. Vegeta turned heavily and covered his eyes with his forearm. Here, in the pool of warm light, he was nobody but himself as he knew him. Just Vegeta, his two fists and his quick tongue and all that he'd ever truly had, whose company he would always keep: loneliness.

From a sleep that was more like a held breath he roused as if swimming up through glue, and with deeper breathing his eyes came to open and find her sitting there, blue head haloed in the afternoon rays, gazing at him.

Vegeta blinked, crossed his arms above his head, stretched his legs stiff and straight, and then with a deep, rumbling sigh, addressed her.

"Why are you in here?"

The razor's edge in his voice was only faintly dulled by sleep, but Bulma recognized the curiosity. She stole her opportunity. Her voice was contrarily sharp and accusatory in the sleepy, afternoon heat.

"If you sleep, you're wracked with nightmares."

He watched her, unblinking, under sleep swollen lids.

"So you don't sleep. You fly yourself around until you're so exhausted there isn't any room to think. And this—" she gestured at his grizzled face, his gritty, red eyes— "is what passes for sleep."

He grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled it up over his round shoulder, turning his back to her. He heard her sigh through her nose with annoyance, flinched at the familiar prick of her tone.

Then stiffened as her legs shot purposefully under the blanket and she wriggled under the sheets. She flopped around to get comfortable before stilling, her breath hitting his back, carefully keeping her limbs to herself. It was an intimate act that only Bulma could execute so casually, because she didn't have a bone in her body that could just follow the fucking rules. Their _own_ goddamned rules. She never could take a hint. But then again, her defiance and her refusal to be intimidated had been part of her charm. She never backed down. Not even after he broke her.

"Vegeta."

Her voice, husky with sudden seriousness, curled longingly against his ribs. He tried to exhale it, but held it tight instead.

"Do you wish you had died?"

His ears rang distantly, likely the result of so many blasts endured at short range. His fists clenched in the blanket, but the white wall across from him gave up no answers.

What makes a man? What makes a man want to walk away from his mind? If he could express it, then she could decipher it, but then the whole thing they were trying to construct would unravel between them. What they'd slapped together to continue functioning around one another was built of dissembling and silence and rejection of themselves or of each other, and it would only hold up if both of them participated in keeping it erected.

What makes a man want to spend his whole life behind a disguise?

This morning, he'd stood at the coast of the East Sea, where, like old friends, it grumpily battered the rocky shore. The icy spray and the roar of the unyielding surf had enveloped him until it was all he could see and smell and feel and hear and he'd become it. He'd watched the sun rise, its fingers of light casting shadows on the sea. Gulls shrieked distantly, the stars pale silver in the deep sky. And he had felt the familiar insignificance and meaningless that had been his only companion since the Cell Games.

He was a man who had always been driven by a purpose, with no room for anything but maximum efficiency in pursuit of that goal. Now there was nothing.

The mood had been interrupted. Eclipsed, by Her. Not so much the thought of her, but a sensation, like the warm, companionable relief of a campfire. The feeling was simple, knowable. Trusted, life-giving.

Those were not words he'd intentionally use to describe Her. The sea spray had dampened his hair, and, weighted down, it had clung to his cheeks.

The image his subconsciousness had chosen was disjointing. Fires were tools of survival. Only _she_ could make something faceted with purpose. Only _she_ could be both pleasure and advantage, when those categories had once been mutually exclusive. Only she refused to be limited and defined, by her society, by her friends and family, by him. Even he had not succeeded in that. She was better than him. But it did not put her at odds with him. The campfire did not compete with him. It made certain he survived the night.

And he'd thought, quick and startling and packed with uneasy implication, that she might enjoy this view.

And the vast ocean and infinite sky and cutting wind hadn't seemed as contrary anymore. Just extensions of himself. Simply partners with their own strengths in a complex world.

She lay behind him. He knew, if he spoke, if he cleared the cobwebs with the palm of his hand and invited the truth in, her brows would knit with that mixture of concern and frustration, her gaze inward but sharp as she pondered all the ways in which she could repair him. Everything and everyone was an algorithm to be solved and a tool to be improved on. He used to feel insulted by it. But now he feared that he was incapable of being improved.

His fear protected itself with silence, a deafness and dumbness imposed on even their bodies as they lay beside one another, miles apart.

What makes a man want to break a heart?

What makes a man?

A man may get stitched back up, but he was never the man he was before, the whole man. Vegeta suspected that everyone who had eyes could now see his every failure and inadequacy, writ like a docket of sins on his skin. But he didn't deserve to be repaired by her. To refuse to heal meant preservation. It kept him feeling alive. With his wounds untreated, at least he was able to feel something. At least pain was something that filled the void.

But now, without a real night's sleep in months and her in such close proximity, he thought he might tremble into pieces, unable any longer to stubbornly hold himself together. It was becoming clear that it wasn't working. They weren't working. The muscle memory of the other's skin was too real, the call and response of pain and comfort between them overpowering. Even when they inflicted pain on the other, instinctively their bodies sought to remedy it. To answer her out loud was to answer that seductive call. To, with profound relief, loose control.

She was cold and distant since he'd made landfall, and he bore it, because he deserved it. He'd felt it a stalwart strategy to keep them safe. The bigger the wound, the better they were protected.

But he and Bulma had something that made the stuff of storms. Every word between them was electrically charged. Standing with her in the same room was enough to cause his ki to skip across his spine. They could never be as she and her Scarface were, just friends, just occupying the same space in an uncomplicated partnership. The thought hurt. He hurt.

"I sometimes think," his deep voice rippled as he sought to control the monster surging in his chest, "that I should have just stayed dead."

He flinched as her hand splayed against his broad back before caressing the plane of his spine.

It had been so long since he'd been touched comfortingly. The sensation was foreign and jarring, and he walled himself off from it before it could be taken away.

Her forehead, riotously, then, pressing and lolling in the crevice of his back, and tentatively, squirming her arms under his heavy, compact waist to squeeze him close, his abdominals flexing beneath her in discomfort at her nearness.

Bulma, the rule breaker.

"I'm glad you didn't," she finally murmured, her breath warm. "If you hadn't—"

there'd be no Trunks, she could have said, but instead said

"—I wouldn't have gotten to know you."

It was a cipher for all that lay between them, and he felt more composite and solid with her admission.

What makes a man? The man himself?

Vegeta had fiercely thought so, but had proven himself wrong. His ancestors and their genes had helped mold the shapeless clay, and Frieza and two decades of infantry life had fired it. But that wasn't him. _This_ was him, this thing that didn't feel or dream, because there was nothing of himself left to feel. The Vegeta before had been a product, churned out on a military assembly line and puffed up with importance, only to come face to face with his own limited abilities as his son's body bled out. He, and no one else, had made the loudest mockery of himself all these years.

She scooted up the length of bed, briefly unclenching him to bury her nose in his hair. He smelled like the salt of the ocean and the musk of wild things.

He had doubted once that the opposite sex had anything to offer a man. Except this woman had been different, very different, as if she'd been made just to prove him wrong. With her, it had been talking for the first time to someone of his likeness, his caliber, an equal apart from a system composed entirely of subordinates and superiors. It had been practicing his own voice.

They were fire, and their bodies had tried to fan, suffocate, and translate it to a language their minds could comprehend.

Here he was, at the bottom, staring at the basest part of himself. The truest. And she remained.

He fell asleep, the speckled golden light, screened through ficus leaves, warm against his eyelids, and in her arms, with her forehead pressing at the base of his neck, there was just himself, remaking a man.

* * *

"Quit lying," Before-Bulma laughs, and captures his lips in her own. "Tell me the truth."

"Make me," he baits, his chest rumbling under her own huskily, and despite that a prophecy awaits him, he rolls her thighs in his hands and smiles into the place between her breasts. "Make me."

With him, she floats, suspended beyond the here and now and anchored only by his rare smile, the one that crooks on his face now.

With him, she is legless and free.


End file.
